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4 





THE ANCIENT LAW 








BY THE 
SAME AUTHOR 


THE WHEEL OF LIFE 

THE DELIVERANCE 

THE BATTLE-GROUND 

THE FREEMAN, AND OTHER POEMS 
THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE 
PHASES OF AN INFERIOR PLANET 


THE DESCENDANT 

















The 
Ancient Law 





By 
ELLEN GLASGOW 
{ P 
ote ? is iv | 




























New York 
Doubleday, Page & Company 


a 



































COPYRIGHT, 1908, BY 
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 
PUBLISHED, JANUARY, 1908 


Act RicHts RESERVED 
INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION INTO ForREIGN LANGUAGES 
INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN 


qT | 
GS4e 
a 


TO 
MY GOOD FRIEND EFFENDI 


























CONTENTS 


Book First—Tue New LiFs 


CHAPTER PAGE 
I. The Road 4 ; ° ° 3 

Il. The Night : i 6 ei Se 
III. The Return to Pappabannock ‘ Aa, 
IV. The Dream of Daniel Smith . ae 
V. At Tappahannock . Conse 
VI. The Pretty Daughter of the May OF Oe 
VII. Shows the Graces of Adversity. ; 72 
VIII. “Ten Commandment Smith” . NSA 
IX. The Old andthe New . : eo ROR 


X. His Neighbour’s Garden . ‘ oo ere 
XI. Bullfinch’s Hollow . ° , hy os." 
XII. A String of Coral . ‘ ‘ a 


Book SECOND—THE Day OF RECKONING 


I. In Which a Stranger Appears . ray 
II. Ordway Compromises With the Past . 162 
III. A Change of Lodging ; 174 
IV. Shows That a Laugh Does not hal 3 a 
Heartache . ‘ SE 
V. Treats of a Great Pasdod in a Simple 
Soul . ; ‘ ; one 


VI. In Which Baxter Plots ; : . 209 


Vil 


Vill 


THE ANCIENT LAW 


Shows That Politeness, Like Charity, 


Is an Elastic Mantle 
The Turn of the Wheel 
At the Cross-roads 
Between Man and Man 
Between Man and Woman 


Book TuHIrRpD—THE LARGER PRISON 


The Return to Life. 

His Own Place 

The Outward Pattern 

The Letter and the Spirit 
The Will of Alice 

The Iron Bars 

The Vision and the pee 
The Weakness in Strength 


Book FourRTH—LIBERATION 


The Inward Light . 

At Tappahannock Again . 
Alice’s Marriage ; 
The Power of the Blood . 
The House of Dreams 
The Ultimate Choice 
Flight i 

The End of the ee 
The Light Beyond . 


PAGE 


222 
234 
248 
256 
268 


281 
290 
303 
317 
329 
341 
353 
363 


379 
392 
409 
420 
434 
443 
454 
469 
482 


BOOK FIRST 
THE NEW LIFE 


me) 


e fee 
wit 


eee 
Braye wari) 
Se 


FRAN 
tape 

é a ah ey 
Fi 





CHAPTER I 
THe Roap 


HOUGH it was six days since Daniel Ordway had 

- come out of prison, he was aware, when he 
reached the brow of the hill, and stopped to look 
back over the sunny Virginia road, that he drank in 
the wind as if it were his first breath of freedom. 
At his feet the road dropped between two low hills 
beyond which swept a high, rolling sea of broom- 
sedge; and farther still—where the distance melted 
gradually into the blue sky—he could see not less 
plainly the New York streets through which he 
had gone from his trial and the walls of the prison 
where he had served five years. Between this 
memory and the deserted look of the red clay road 
there was the abrupt division which separates 
actual experience from the objects in a dream. 
He felt that he was awake, yet it seemed that 
the country through which he walked must vanish 
presently at a touch. Even the rough March wind 
blowing among the broomsedge heightened rather 
than diminished the effect of the visionary meeting 
of earth and sky. 

As he stood there in his ill-fitting clothes, with his 
head bared in the sun and the red clay ground to fine 
dust on his coarse boots, it would have been difficult 

3 


4 THE ANCIENT LAW 


at a casual glance to have grouped him appropriately 
in any division of class. He might have been either 


~ . a gentleman who had turned tramp or a tramp who 
- «had. beens born to look a gentleman. Though he 


was barely ahove medium height, his figure produced 
even in .repose.-an impression of great muscular 
strength, and this impression was repeated in his 
large, regular, and singularly expressive features. 
His face was square with a powerful and rather 
prominent mouth and chin; the brows were heavily 
marked and the eyes were of so bright a blue that 
they lent an effect which was almost one of gaiety 
to his smile. In his dark and slightly coarsened face 
the colour of his eyes was intensified until they 
appeared to flash at times like blue lights under his 
thick black brows. His age was, perhaps, forty years, 
though at fifty there would probably be but little 
change recorded in his appearance. At thirty one 
might have found, doubtless, the same lines of suffer- 
ing upon his forehead and about his mouth. 

As he went on over some rotting planks which 
spanned a stream that had gone dry, the road he 
followed was visible as a faded scar in a stretch of 
impoverished, neutral-toned country—the least dis- 
tinctive and most isolated part of what is known in 
Virginia as “‘the Southside.”’ A bleached monotony 
was the one noticeable characteristic of the landscape 
—the pale clay road, the dried broomsedge, and even 
the brownish, circular-shaped cloud of smoke, which 
hung over the little town in the distance, each 
contributing a depressing feature to a face which 


THE ROAD 5 


presented at best an unrelieved flatness of colour. 
The single high note in the dull perspective was 
struck by a clump of sassafras, which, mistaking the 
mild weather for a genial April, had flowered tremu- 
lously in gorgeous yellow. 

The sound of a wagon jolting over the rough road, 
reached him presently from the top of the hill, and 
as he glanced back, he heard a drawling curse thrown 
to the panting horses. A moment later he was over- 
taken by an open spring wagon filled with dried 
tobacco plants of the last season’s crop. In the 
centre of the load, which gave out a stale, pungent 
odour, sat a small middle-aged countryman, who 
swore mild oaths in a pleasant, jesting tone. From 
time to time, as the stalks beneath him were jostled 
out of place, he would shift his seat and spread out 
his short legs clad in overalls of blue jean. Behind 
him in the road the wind tossed scattered and 
damaged leaves of tobacco. ‘ 

When the wagon reached Ordway, he glanced over 
his shoulder at the driver, while he turned into the 
small grass-grown path amid the clumps of sassafras. 

‘Is that Bernardsville over there?’ he asked, 
pointing in the direction of the cloud of smoke. 

The wagon drew up quickly and the driver—who 
showed at nearer view to be a dirty, red-bearded 
farmer of the poorer class—stared at him with an 
expression which settled into suspicion before it had 
time to denote surprise. 

“Bernardsville! Why, you ’ve come a good forty 
miles out of yourroad. That thar’s Tappahannock.” 


6 THE ANCIENT LAW 


““Tappahannock? I had n’t heard of it.” 
‘**Mebbe you ain’t, but it never knowed it.’’ 
“Anything going on there? Work, I mean?’’ 
“The* biggest shippin’ of tobaccy this side 0’ 
Danville is goin’ on thar. Ever heard o’ Danville?”’ 

‘*T know the name, but the tobacco market is about 
closed now, isn’t it? The season’s over.” 

The man’s laugh startled the waiting horses, and 
lifting their heads from a budding bush by the road- 
side, they moved patiently toward Tappahannock. 

“Closed? Bless you, it never closes—Whoa! thar, 
won’t you, darn you? To be sure sales ain’t so brisk 
to-day as they war a month back, but I’m jest 
carryin’ in my leetle crop to Baxter’s warehouse.” 

“Tt isn’t manufactured, then—only bought and 
sold?”’ 

“Oh, it’s sold quick enough and bought, too. 
Baxter auctions the leaf off in lots and it’s shipped 
to the factories in Richmond an’ in Danville. You 
ain’t a native of these parts, I reckon?”’ 

‘““A native—no? I’m looking for work.” 

“What sort of work? Thar’s work an’ work. I 
Saw a man once settin’ out in an old field doin’ a 
picture of a pine tree, an’ he called it work. Wall, 
wall, if you’re goin’ all the way to Tappahannock, 
I reckon I kin give you a lift along. Mebbe you 
kin pick up an odd job in Baxter’s warehouse— 
thar’s a sayin’ that he feeds all the crows in Tappa- 
hannock.”’ 

He drove on with a chuckle, for Ordway had 
declined the proffered ‘‘lift,” and the little cloud of 


THE ROAD 7 


dust raised by the wagon drifted slowly in the direction 
of the town. 

A mile farther on Ordway found that as the road 
approached Tappahannock, the country lost grad- 
ually its aspect of loneliness, and the colourless fields 
were dotted here and there with small Negro cabins, 
built for the most part of unbarked pine logs laid 
roughly cross-wise to form square enclosures. Before 
one of these primitive dwellings a large black woman, 
with a strip of checked blue and white gingham bound 
about her head, was emptying a pail of buttermilk 
into a wooden trough. When she saw Ordway 
she nodded to him from the end of the little path, 
bordered by rocks, which led from the road- 
side to the single stone step before her cabin 
door. 

As he watched the buttermilk splash into the 
trough, Ordway remembered, with a spasm of faint- 
ness, that he had eaten nothing since the day before, 
and turning out of the road, he asked the woman 
for a share of the supper that she gave the pigs. 

“Go ’way, honey, dis yer ain’ fit’n fur you,’ she 
replied, resting the pail under her arm against her 
rolling hip, “‘I’se des’ thowin’ hit ter de hawgs.” 

But when he had repeated his request, she motioned 
to a wooden bench beside a scrubby lilac bush on 
which a coloured shirt hung drying, and going into 
the single room inside, brought him a glass of but- 
termilk and a piece of corn bread on a tin plate. 
While he ate hungrily of the coarse food a half- 
naked Negro baby, covered with wood ashes, rolled 


8 THE ANCIENT LAW 


across the threshold and lay sprawling in the path 
at his feet. 

After a little rambling talk the woman went back 
into the cabin, where she whipped up cornmeal dough 
in an earthenware bowl, turning at intervals to toss 
a scrap or two to a red and white cock that hovered, 
expectant, about the doorway. In the road a 
covered wagon crawled by, and the shadow it threw 
stretched along the path to the lilac bush where the 
coloured shirt hung drying. The pigs drank the 
buttermilk from the trough with loud grunts; the 
red and white cock ventured, alert and wary, across 
the threshold; and the Negro baby, after sprawling 
on its stomach in the warm earth, rolled over and lay 
staring in silence at the blue sky overhead. 

There was little beauty in the scene except the 
beauty which belongs to all things under the open 
sky. Road and landscape and cabin were bare even 
of any chance effect of light and shadow. Yet 
there was life—the raw, primal life of nature—and 
_ after his forty years of wasted experience, Ordway 
was filled with a passionate desire for life. In 
his careless pursuit of happiness he had often found 
weariness instead, but sitting now homeless and penni- 
less, before the negro’s cabin, he discovered that 
each object at which he looked—the long road that 
led somewhere, the smoke hanging above the distant 
town, the deep-bosomed negro mother and the 
half-naked negro baby—that each of these possessed 
an interest to which he awakened almost with a start 
of wonder. And yielding to the influence of his 


THE ROAD 9 


thought, his features appeared to lose gradually their 
surface coarseness of line. It was as if his mouth 
grew vague, enveloped in shadow, while the cyes 
dominated the entire face and softened its ex- 
pression to one of sweetness, gaiety and youth. 
The child that is in every man big enough to contain 
it looked out suddenly from his altered face. 

He was thinking now of a day in his boyhood—of 
an early autumn morning when the frost was white 
on the grass and the chestnuts dropped heavily from 
the spreading boughs and the cider smelt strong and 
sweet as it oozed from the crushed winesaps. On 
that morning, after dressing by candlelight, he had 
gone into town with his maiden aunt, a lady whom 
he remembered chiefly by her false gray curls which 
she wore as if they had been a halo. At the wayside 
station, while they had waited for the train to the 
little city of Botetourt, he had seen a convict brought 
in, handcuffed, on his way to the penitentiary, and 
in response to the boy’s persistent questioning, his 
aunt had told him that the man was wicked, though 
he appeared to the child’s eyes to be only miserable— 
a thin, dirty, poorly clad labourer with a red cotton 
handkerchief bound tightly about his jaw. A severe 
toothache had evidently attacked him, for while 
he had stared sullenly at the bare planks of the floor, 
he had made from time to time a suffering, irritable 
movement with his head. At each gesture the guard 
had called out sharply: ‘Keep still there, won’t 
you?” to which the convict had responded by a savage 
lowering of his heavy brows. 


10 THE ANCIENT LAW 


For the first time it had occurred to the child that 
day that there must be a strange contradiction—a 
fundamental injustice in the universal scheme of 
nature. He had always been what his father had 
called impatiently ‘“‘a boy with ideas,’ and it had 
seemed to him then that this last ‘‘idea’”’ of his was. 
far the most wonderful of them all—more wonderful 
than any he had found in books or in his own 
head at night. At the moment he had felt it swell 
so large in his heart that a glow of happiness had 
spread through his body to his trembling hands. 
Slipping from his aunt’s hold he had crossed the 
room to where the convict sat sullenly beside his 
guard. 

“Tl give you all my money,” he had cried out 
joyously, ‘‘because | am so much happier than you.” 

The convict had started and looked up with an 
angry flash in his eyes; the guard had burst into a 
loud laugh while he spat tobacco juice through the 
window; the silver had scattered and rolled under 
the benches on the plank floor; and the child’s aunt, 
rustling over in her stiff brocade, had seized his arm. 
and dragged him, weeping loudly, into the train. 
So his first mission had failed, yet at this day he 
could remember the joy with which he had stretched 
out his little hand and the humiliation in which he 
had drawn it back. That was thirty years ago, but 
he wondered now if the child’s way had been God’s 
way, after all? 

For there had come an hour in his life when the 
convict of his boyhood had stood in closer relationship 


THE ROAD II 


to his misery than the people whom he had touched 
in the street. His childish memories scattered like 
mist, and the three great milestones of his past 
showed bare and white, as his success, his temp- 
tation and his fall. He remembered the careless 
ambition of his early youth, the brilliant promise 
of his college years, and the day on which he had 
entered as a younger member the great banking 
house of Amos, Bonner, and Amos. Between this 
day and the slow minutes when he had stood in his 
wife’s sitting-room awaiting his arrest, he could 
find in his thoughts no gradation of years to mark 
the terrible swiftness of his descent. In that time 
which he could not divide Wall Street had reached 
out and sucked him in; the fever of speculation had ° 
consumed like disease the hereditary instincts, the 
sentiments of honour, which had barred its way. 
One minute he had stood a rich man on the floor 
of the Stock Exchange—and was it an instant or a 
century afterwards that he had gone out into the 
street and had known himself to be a beggar and 
a criminal? Other men had made millions with 
the use of money which they held in trust; but the 
star of the gambler had deserted him at the critical 
hour; and where other men had won and triumphed, 
he had gone down, he told himself, dishonoured by 
a stroke of luck. In his office that day a mirror over 
the mantel had showed him his face as he entered, 
and he had stopped to look at it almost with curiosity 
—as if it were the face of a stranger which repelled 
him because it bore some sinister likeness to his own. 


12 THE ANCIENT LAW 


After this there had come days, weeks, months, 
when at each sudden word, at each opening of the 
door, he had started, half sickened, by fear of the 
discovery which he knew must come. His nerves 
had quivered and given way under the pressure; he 
had grown morose, irritable, silent; and in some half- 
insane frenzy, he had imagined that his friends, his 
family, his wife, even his young children, had begun 
to regard him with terror and suspicion. But at 
last the hour had come, and in the strength with 
which he had risen to meet it, he had won back almost 
his old self—for courage, not patience, was the 
particular virtue of his temperament. He had stood 
his trial bravely, had heard his sentence without a 
tremor, and had borne his punishment without 
complaint. The world and he were quits now, and he 
felt that it owed him at least the room for a fair fight. 

The prison, he had said once, had squared him 
with his destiny, yet to-day each act of his past 
appeared to rivet, not itself, but its result upon his 
life. Though he told himself that he was free, 
he knew that, in the reality of things, he was 
still a prisoner. From the lowest depths that he 
had touched he was reached even now by the 
agony of his most terrible moment when, at the 
end of his first hopeless month, he had found awaiting 
him one day a letter from his wife. It was her 
final good-bye, she had written; on the morrow 
she would leave with her two children for his 
father’s home in Virginia; and the single condition 
upon which the old man had consented to provide 


THE ROAD 13 


for them was that she should separate herself 
entirely from her husband. ‘‘The condition is hard,”’ 
she had added, ‘‘made harder, too, by the fact that 
you are his son and my only real claim upon him is 
through you—yet when you consider the failure of 
our life together, and that the children’s education 
even is unprovided for, you will, I feel sure, admit 
that my decision has been a wise one.’’ 

The words had dissolved and vanished before his 
eyes, and turning away he had flung himself on his 
prison bed, while the hard, dry sobs had quivered 
like blows in his chest. Yet she was right! His 
judgment had acquitted her in the first agony of his 
reproach, and the unerring justice in her decision 
had convicted him with each smooth, calm sentence 
in her letter. As he lay there he had lost conscious- 
ness of the bare walls and the hot sunshine that fell 
through the grating, for the ultimate desolation had 
closed over him like black waters. 

A little later he had gone from his celi and 
taken up his life again; but all that he remembered 
of it now was a voice that had called to him in the 
prison yard. 

“You look so darn sunk in the mouth I ’Il let you 
have my last smoke—damn you!”’ 

Turning sullenly he had accepted the stranger’s 
tobacco, unaware at the moment that he was par- 
taking of the nature of a sacrament—for while he had 
smoked there in his dogged misery, he had felt revive 
in his heart a stir of sympathy for the convict he had 
seen at the wayside station in Virginia. As if 


14 THE ANCIENT LAW 


revealed by an inner illumination the impressions of 
that morning had started, clear as light, into his 
brain. The frost on the grass, the dropping chestnuts, 
the strong sweet smell of the crushed winesaps—these 
things surrounded in his memory the wretched figure 
of the man with the red cotton handkerchief bound 
tightly about his swollen jaw. But the figure had 
ceased now to stand for itself and for its own degra- 
dation alone—haunting, tragic, colossal, it had be- 
come in his thoughts the iraage of all those who suffer 
and are oppressed. So through his sin and his re- 
morse, Ordway had travelled slowly toward the 
' vision of service. 

With a word of thanks to the woman, he rose 
from the bench and went down the little path 
and out into the road. The wind had changed 
suddenly, and as he emerged from the shelter of a 
thicket, it struck against his face with a biting edge. 
Where the sun had declined in the western sky, heavy 
clouds were driving close above the broken line of 
the horizon. The night promised to be cold, and he 
pushed on rapidly, urged by a feeling that the little 
town before him held rest and comfort and the 
new life beneath its smoking chimneys. Walking 
was less difficult now, for the road showed signs of 
travel as it approached the scattered houses, which 
appeared thrust into community by the surrounding 
isolation of the fields. At last, as he ascended a 
slight elevation, he found that the village, screened 
by a small grove of pines, lay immediately beneath 
the spot upon which he stood. 


CHAPTER II 
Tue NIGHT 


THE scattered houses closed together in groups, 
the road descended gradually into a hollow, and 
emerging on the opposite side, became a street, and 
the street slouched lazily downhill to where a railroad 
track ran straight as a seam across the bare country. 
Quickening his steps, Ordway came presently to the 
station—a small wooden building newly painted a 
brilliant yellow—and pushed his way with difficulty 
through a crowd of Negroes that had gathered closely 
beside the waiting train. 

“Thar ’s a good three hundred of the critters going 
to a factory in the North,’ remarked a man behind 
him, ‘‘an’ yit they don’t leave more’n a speck of 
white in the county. Between the crows an’ the 
darkies I'll be blamed if you can see the colour of 
the soil.” 

The air was heavy with hot, close smells—a ming- 
ling of smoke, tobacco, dust and humanity. A 
wailing sound issued from the windows of the cars 
where the dark faces were packed tightly together, 
and a tall Negro, black as ebony, in a red shirt 
open at the throat, began strumming excitedly 
upon a banjo. Near him a mulatto woman lifted 
a shrill soprano voice, while she stood beating the 

15 


16 THE ANCIENT LAW 


air distractedly with her open palms. On the other 
side of the station a dog howled, and the engine 
uttered an angry whistle as if impatient of the delay. 

After five years of prison discipline, the ugly little 
town appeared to Ordway to contain an alluring 
promise of freedom. At the instant the animation 
in the scene spoke to his blood as if it had been 
beauty, and movement seemed to him to possess 
some peculiar esthetic quality apart from form or 
colour. The brightly dyed calicos on the Negro 
women;the shining black faces of the men, smooth 
as ebony; the tragic primitive voices, like voices 
imprisoned in the soil; the strumming of the rude 
banjo; the whistling engine and the howling dog; the 
odours of smoke and dust and fertilisers—all these 
things blended in his senses to form an intoxicating 
impression of life. Nothing that could move or utter 
sounds or lend a spot of colour appeared common 
or insignificant to his awakened brain. It was all 
life, and for five years he had been starved in every 
sense and instinct. 

The main street—Warehouse Street, as he found 
later that it was called—appeared in the distance as 
a broad river of dust which ran from the little station 
to where the warehouses and smail shops gave place 
to the larger dwellings which presided pleasantly 
over the neighbouring fields. As Ordway followed 
the board sidewalk, he began idiy reading the signs 
over the shops he passed, until ‘‘Kelly’s Saloon,”’ 
and ‘‘ Baker’s General Store”? brought him suddenly 
upon a dark oblong building which ran back, under 


THE NIGHT 17 


a faded brick archway. Before the entrance several 
men were seated in cane chairs, which they had 
tilted conveniently against the wall, and at Ordway’s 
approach they edged slightly away and sat regarding 
him over their pipes with an expression of curiosity 
which differed so little in the different faces that it ap- 
peared to result from some internal automatic spring. 

“I beg your pardon,” he began after a moment’s 
hesitation, ‘but I was told that I might find work 
in Baxter’s warehouse.” 

“Well, it’s a first-rate habit not to believe every- 
thing you ’re told,” responded an enormous man, in 
half-soiled clothes, who sat smoking in the middle 
ofthearchway. ‘“Ican’t find work myselfin Baxter’s 
warehouse at this season. Ain’t that so, boys?” he 
enquired with a good-natured chuckle of his 
neighbours. 

‘Are you Mr. Baxter?’’ asked Ordway shortly. 

‘‘T’m not sure about the Mister, but I’m Baxter 
all right.”” He had shifted his pipe to the extreme 
corner of his mouth as he spoke, and now removing 
it with what seemed an effort, he sat prodding the 
ashes with his stubby thumb. His face, as he 
glanced down, was overspread by a flabbiness which 
appeared to belong to expression rather than to 
feature. 

“Then there’s no chance for me?” enquired 
Ordway. 

“You might try the cotton mills—they ’s just 
down the next street. If there’s a job to be had in 
town you ‘ll most likely run up against it there.” 


ae THE ANCIENT LAW 


“It’s no better than a wild goose chase you’re 
sending him on, Baxter,’’ remarked a smaller member 
of the group, whose head protruded unexpectedly 
above Baxter’s enormous shoulder; “I was talking 
to Jasper Trend this morning and he told me he was 
turning away men every day. Whew! but this wind 
is getting too bitter for me, boys.” 

““Oh, there’s no harm can come of trying,” 
insisted the cheerful giant, pushing back his chair 
as the others retreated out of the wind, “if hope 
does n’t fill the stomach it keeps the heart up, and 
that ’s something.”’ 

His great laugh rolled out, following Ordway along 
the street as he went in pursuit of the fugitive oppor- 
tunity which disported itself now in the cotton factory 
at the foot of the hill. When he reached the doors 
the work of the day was already over, and a crowd 
of operatives surged through the entrance and over- 
flowed into the two roads which led by opposite ways 
into the town. Drawing to one side of the swinging 
doors, he stood watching the throng a moment be- 
fore he could summon courage to enter the building 
and inquire for the office of the manager. When 
he did so at last it was with an almost boyish 
feeling of hesitation. 

The manager—a small, wiry man with a wart 
on the end of his long nose—was hurriedly piling 
papers into his desk before closing the factory 
and going home to supper. His hands moved 
impatiently, almost angrily, for he remembered that 
he had already worked overtime and that the muffins 


THE NIGHT ee 


his wife had promised him for supper would be cold, 
At any other hour of the day he would have received 
Ordway with politeness—for he was at heart a well- _ 
disposed and even a charitable person—but it hap- 
pened that his dinner had been unsatisfactory (his 
mutton had been served half raw by a new maid of 
all-work) and he had particularly set his hopes upon 
the delicious light muffins in which his wife ex- 
celled. So when he saw Ordway standing between 
him and his release, his face grew black and the 
movements of his hands passed to jerks of frantic 
irritation. 

“What do youwant? Say it quick—I ’ve no time 
to talk,’’ he began, as he pushed the last heap of papers 
inside, and let the lid of his desk fall with a bang. 

“‘T’m looking for work,’’ said Ordway, “‘and I was 
told at Baxter’s warehouse——’” 

“Darn Baxter. What kind of work do you want?” 

“T'Iltake anything—I can do bookkeeping or sy 

“Well, I don’t want a bookkeeper.” 

He locked his desk, and turning to take down his 
hat, was incensed further by discovering that it was 
not on the hook where he had placed it when he came 
in. Finding it at last on a heap of reports in the 
corner, he put it on his head and stared at Ordway, 
with his angry eyes. 

“You must have come a long way—have n’t you? 
Mostly on foot?”’ 

““A zood distance.’’ 

““Why did you select Tappahannock? Was there 
any reason?”’ 3 





20 THE ANCIENT LAW 


“I wanted to try the town, that was all.’’ 

“Well, I tell you what, my man,’ concluded the 
manager, while his rage boiled over in the added 
instants of his delay; ‘‘there have been a blamed 
sight too many of your kind trying Tappahan- 
nock of late—and the best thing you can do is to 
move on to a less particular place. When we want 
bookkeepers here we don’t pick ’em up out of the 
road.” 

Ordway swallowed hard, and his hands clinched in 
a return of one of his boyish spasms of temper. His 
vision of the new life was for an instant defaced and 
clouded; then as he met the angry little eyes of the 
man before him, he felt that his rage went out of 
him as suddenly as it had come. Turning without 
a word, he passed through the entrance and out into 
the road, which led back, by groups of negro hovels, 
into the main street of the town. 

His anger gave place to helplessness; and it seemed 
to him, when he reached presentlythe larger dwellings 
upon the hill, and walked slowly past the squares of 
light that shone through the unshuttered windows, 
that he was more absolutely alone than if he had 
stood miles away from any human habitation. The 
outward nearness had become in his thoughts the 
measure of the inner distance. He felt himself to be 
detached from humanity, yet he knew that in his 
_ heart there existed a stronger bond than he had ever 
admitted in the years of his prosperity. The generous 
impulses of his youth were still there, but had not 
sorrow winnowed them from all that was base or 


THE NIGHT 21 


merely selfish? Was the lesson that he had learned 
in prison to be wholly lost? Did the knowledge he 
had found there count for nothing in his life—the 
bitterness of shame, the agony of remorse, the com- 
panionship with misery? He remembered a Sunday 
in the prison when he had listened to a sermon from 
a misshapen little preacher, whose face was drawn 
sideways by a burn which he had suffered during an 
epileptic seizure in his childhood. In spite of his 
grotesque features the man had drawn Ordway by 
some invisible power which he had felt even then to 
be the power of faith. Crippled, distorted, poorly 
clad, the little preacher, he felt, had found the great 
possession which he was still seeking—this man 
believed with a belief that was larger than the ex- 
ternal things which he had lost. When he shut his 
eyes now he could still see the rows of convicts in 
the chapel, the pale, greenish light in which each 
face resembled the face of a corpse, the open Bible in 
its black leather binding, and beside it the grotesque 
figure of the little preacher who had come, like his 
Master, to call not the righteous but sinners to 
repentance. 

The sun had dropped like a ball below the gray 
horizon, and the raw March wind, when it struck him 
now, brought no longer the exhilaration of the after- 
noon. A man passed him, comfortable, well-fed, 
wheezing slightly, with his fat neck wrapped in a 
woollen muffler, and as he stopped before a white- 
washed gate, which opened into the garden surround- 
ing a large, freshly painted house, Ordway touched 


22 THE ANCIENT LAW 


his arm and spoke to him in a voice that had fallen 
almost to a whisper. 

At his words, which were ordinary enough, the man 
turned on him a face which had paled slightly from 
surprise or fear. In the twilight Ordway could see 
his jaw drop while he fumbled awkwardly with his 
gloved hands at the latch of the gate. 

“IT don’t know what you mean—I don’t know”’ he 
repeated in a wheezing voice, ‘‘I’m sorry, but I really 
don’t know,”’ he insisted again as if in a helpless effort 
to be understood. Once inside the garden, he closed 
the gate with a bang behind him, and went rapidly 
up the gravelled walk to the long piazza where the 
light of a lamp under a red shade streamed through 
the open door. 

Turning away Ordway followed the street to the 
end of the town, where it passed without distinct 
change of character into the country road. On this 
side the colour of the soil had paled until it looked 
almost blanched under the rising moon. Though 
the twilight was already in possession of the fields 
a thin red line was still visible low in the west, and 
beneath this the scattered lights in negro cabins 
shone like obscure, greenish glow-worms, hidden 
among clumps of sassafras or in stretches of dried 
broomsedge. As Ordway looked at these humble 
dwellings, it seemed to him that they might afford a 
hospitality denied him by the more imposing houses 
of the town. He had already eaten of the Negro’s 
charity, and it was possible that before dawn he 
might be compelled to eat of it again. 


THE NIGHT 23 


Beneath his feet the long road called to him as it 
wound a curving white line drawn through the vague 
darkness of the landscape. Somewhere in a distant 
pasture a bull bellowed, and the sound came to him 
like the plaintive voice of the abandoned fields. 
While he listened the response of his tired feet to the 
road appeared to him as madness, and stopping short, 
he turned quickly and looked back in the direction 
of Tappahannock. But from the spot on which he 
stood the lights of the town offered little promise of 
hospitality, so after an uncertain glance, he moved 
on again to a bare, open place where two roads met 
and crossed at the foot of a blasted pine. A few 
steps farther he discovered that a ruined gate stood 
immediately on his right, and beyond the crumbling 
brick pillars, he made out dimly the outlines of several 
fallen bodies, which proved upon nearer view to be 
the prostrate forms of giant cedars. An avenue 
had once led, he gathered, from the gate to a house 
situated somewhere at the end of the long curve, for 
the great trees lying across the road must have stood: 
once as the guardians of an estate of no little value. 
Whether the cedars had succumbed at last to age or 
to the axe of the destroyer, it was too dark at the 
moment for him to ascertain; but the earth had 
claimed them now, magnificent even in their ruin, 
while under the dim tent of sky beyond, he coutd still 
discern their living companions of a hundred years. 
So impressive was the past splendour of this approach 
that the house seemed, when he reached it, almost 
an affront to the mansion which his imagination had 


24 THE ANCIENT LAW 


reared. Broad, low, built of brick, with two long 
irregular wings embedded in English ivy, and a rotting 
shingled roof that sloped over dormered windows, 
its most striking characteristic as he first perceived 
it under the moonlight was the sentiment which is 
inevitably associated with age and decay. Never 
imposing, the dwelling was now barely habitable, for 
the roof was sagging in places over the long wings, 
a chimney had fallen upon one of the moss-covered 
eaves, the stone steps of the porch were hollowed 
into dangerous channels, and the ground before the 
door was strewn with scattered chips from a neighbour- 
ing wood pile. 

The air of desolation was so complete that at first 
Ordway supposed the piace to be uninhabited, but 
discovering a light presently in one of the upper 
windows, he ascended the steps and beat with the 
rusted knocker on the panel of the door. For 
several minutes there was no answer to his knock. 
Then the sound of shuffling footsteps reached him from 
the distance, drawing gradually nearer until they 
stopped immediately beyond the threshold. 

“‘T ain’ gwine open dis yer do’ ef’n hits oner dem ole 
hants,’’ said a voice within, while a sharp point of 
light pierced through the keyhole. 

An instant later, in response to Ordway’s asstirance 
of his bodily reality, the bolt creaked back with an 
effort and the door opened far enough to admit the 
slovenly head and shoulders of an aged negress. 

‘“Miss Meely she’s laid up en she cyar’n see ner 
comp’ny, Marster,” she announced with the evident 


THE NIGHT 25 


intention of retreating as soon as her message was 
delivered. 

Her purpose, however, was defeated, for, slipping 
his heavy boot into the crack of the door, Ordway 
faced her under the lamp which she held high above 
her head. In the shadows beyond he could see 
dimly the bare old hall and the great winding 
staircase which led to the painted railing of the 
gallery above. 

“Can you give me shelter for the night?”’ he asked, 
‘“‘I am a stranger in the county, and I’ve walked 
thirty miles to-day.” 

““Miss Meely don’ wan’ner comp’ny,’’ replied the 
negress, while her head, in its faded cotton hand- 
kerchief, appeared to swing like a pendulum before 
his exhausted eyes. 

“Who is Miss Meely?” he demanded, laying his 
hand upon her apron as she made a sudden terrified 
motion of flight. 

““Miss Meely Brooke—Marse Edward’s daughter. 
He ’s daid.”’ 

“Well, go and ask her. Ill wait here on the porch 
until you return.”’ 

Her eyelids flickered in the lainplight, and he saw 
the whites of her eyes leap suddenly into prominence. 
Then the door closed again, the bolt shot back into 
place, and the shuffling sound grew fainter as it passed 
over the bare floor. A cold nose touched Ordway’s 
hand, and looking down he saw that an old fox- 
hound had crept into the porch and was fawn- 
ing with pleasure at his feet. He was conscious 


26 THE ANCIENT LAW 


of a thrill of gratitude for the first demonstrative wel- 
come he had received at Tappahannock; and while 
he stood there with the hound leaping upon his chest, 
he felt that, in spite of ‘‘Miss Meely,’’ hidden some- 
where behind the closed door, the old house had not 
lost utterly the spirit of hospitality. His hand was 
still on the dog’s head when the bolt creaked again 
and the negress reappeared upon the threshold. 

““Miss Meely she sez she’s moughty sorry, suh, but 
she cyarn’ hev ner strange gent’mun spendin’ de 
night in de house She reckons you mought sleep in 
de barn ef’n you wanter.”’ 

As the door opened wider, her whole person, clad 
in a faded woollen dress, patched brightly in many 
colours, emerged timidly and followed him to the 
topmost step. 

““You des go roun’ ter de back en den thoo’ de hole 
whar de gate used ter be, en dar’s de barn. Nuttin’ 
ain’ gwine hu’t you lessen hits dat ar ole ram ’Lejab.” 

‘Well, he shall not find me unprepared,’’ responded 
Ordway, with a kind of desperate gaiety, and while 
the old hound still leaped at his side, he found his 
way into a little path which led around the corner 
of the house, and through the tangled garden to the 
barn just beyond the fallen gateposts. Here the dog 
deserted him, running back to the porch, where a 
woman’s voice called; and stumbling over a broken 
ploughshare or two, he finally reached the poor 
shelter which Miss. Meely’s hospitality afforded. 

It was very dark inside, but after closing the door 
to shut out the wind, he groped his way through the 


THE NIGHT oy 


blackness to a pile of straw in one corner. The 
place smelt of cattle, and opposite to the spot on which 
he lay, he distinguished presently a soft, regular 
sound which he concluded to be caused by the breath- 
ing of a cow. Evidently the barn was used as a 
cattleshed also, though his observation of the mansion 
did not lead him to suppose that ‘‘Miss Meely”’ 
possessed anything approaching a herd. He remem- 
bered the old negress’s warning allusion to the 
ram, but so far at least the darkness had revealed 
nothing that could prove hostile to his company. 
His head ached and his will seemed suddenly be- 
numbed, so stretching himself at full length in the 
straw he fell, after a few troubled moments, into 
the deep and dreamless sieep of complete physical 
exhaustion. 

An instant afterwards, it seemed to him, he was 
aroused by a light which flashed into his face from 
the opening door. A cold wind blew over him, and 
as he struggled almost blindly back into consciousness, 
he saw that a girl in a red cape stood holding a lantern 
above her head in the centre of the barn. At his 
first look the red cape warmed him as if it had been 
flame; then he became aware that a voice was speak- 
ing to him in a peculiar tone of cheerful authority. 
And it seemed to him that the red cape and the rich 
voice expressed the same dominant quality of 
personality. 

“I thought you must be hungry,” said the voice 
with energy, ‘‘so I ’ve brought your supper.” 

Even while he instinctively grasped the tray she 


28 THE ANCIENT LAW 


held out, he observed with quickened attention that 
the hands which offered him the food had toiled out 
of doors in good and bad weather—though small and 
shapely they were chapped from cold and roughened 
by marks of labour. 

“You ’d better drink your coffee while it’s hot,” 
said the voice again. 

The practical nature of her advice put him imme- 
diately at his ease. 

“It’s the first hot thing I’ve had for a week,”’ he 
responded. 

“Then it will be all the better for you,” replied the 
girl, while she reached up to hang the lantern from 
a rusted nail in the wall. 

As the light fell over her, the red cape slipped a 
little from her shoulder and she put up her hand to 
catch it together on her bosom. The movement, 
slight as it was, gave Ordway a chance to observe that 
she possessed a kind of vigorous grace, which showed 
in the roundness of her limbs and in the rebellious 
freedom of her thick brown hair, The airy little 
curls on her temples stood out, he noticed, as if she 
had been walking bareheaded in the wind. At his 
first look it did not occur to hirn that she was beautiful; 
what impressed him most was the quality of radiant 
energy which revealed itself in every line of her 
face and figure—now sparkling in her eyes, now 
dimpling in her cheek, now quickening her brisk steps 
across the floor, and now touching her eyes and mouth 
like an edge of light. It may have been merely the 
effect of the red cape on a cold night, but as she moved 


a 


THE NIGHT 29» 


back and forth into the dark corners of the barn,, 
she appeared to him to gather both warmth and. 
animation out of the gloom. 

As she did not speak again during her work, he. 
found himself forced to observe the same friendly 
silence. The ravenous hunger of the afternoon had. 
returned to him with the odour of the food, and he: 
ate rapidly, sitting up on his straw bed, while she 
took up a bucket and a piece of wood sharpened at. 
one end and prepared a bran mash for the cow 
quartered in a stall in one corner. When a little. 
later she gathered up an armful of straw to replenish 
the animal’s bed, Ordway pushed the tray aside and 
made a movement as if to assist her; but stopping an. 
instant in her task, she waved him aside with the easy 
dignity of perfect capability. 

*‘I can do it myself, thank you,” she said, smiling;. 
and then, glancing at his emptied plate, she added 
carelessly, ‘‘I ‘ll send back presently for the tray and. 
lantern—good-night!”’ 

Her tone had changed perceptibly on the last word, 
for its businesslike authority had given place to the: 
musical Southern drawl so familiar to his ears in 
childhood. In that simple phrase, accompanied by 
the gracious bend of her whole person, she had put. 
unconsciously generations of social courtesy——of racial 
breeding. 

“Thank you—good-night,” he answered, rising,. 
and drawing back with his hand on the heavy latch. 

Then before she could reach the door and pass. 
through, a second lantern flashed there out of the: 


30 THE ANCIENT LAW 


blackness beyond, and the terrified face of a Negro 
urchin was thrust into the full glare of light. 

““Fo’ de good Lawd, Miss Em’ly, dat ar ole ram 
done butt Sis Mehitable clean inter de smoke ’us.”’ 

Perfectly unruffled by the news the girl looked at 
Ordway, and then held out her small, strong hand 
for the lantern. 

“Very well, I’ll come and shut him up,” she 
responded quietly, and holding the red cape to- 
gether on her bosom, she stepped over the threshold 
and followed the Negro urchin out into the night. 


CHAPTER III 
Tue RETURN TO TAPPAHANNOCK 


AT SUNRISE he came out of the barn, and washed 
his face and hands at the well, where he found a coarse 
towel on the moss-covered trough. The day was 
breaking clear, but in the fine golden light the house 
and lawn appeared even more desolate than they had 
done under the full moon. Before the war the place 
had been probably a comfortable, unpretentious 
country mansion. Some simple dignity still attached 
to its bowers of ivy and its ancient cedars, but it 
was easy to imagine that for thirty years no shingle 
had been added to its crumbling roof, and hardly a 
ship gathered from the littered walk before the door. 
At the end of the avenue six great trees had fallen 
@ sacrifice, he saw now, to the mere lust for timber— 
for freshly cut and still odorous with sap, the huge 
trunks lay directly across the approach over which 
they had presided through the tragic history of the 
house. Judged by what it must have been in a fairly 
prosperous past, the scene was sad enough even to 
the eyes of a stranger; and as Ordway walked slowly 
down the dim, fragrant curve of the avenue, he found 
it difficult to place against so sombre a background, 
a figure as full of life and animation as that of the 
girl he had seen in the barn on the evening before. 

31 


32 THE ANCIENT LAW 


She appeared to his imagination as the embodiment 
of youth amid surroundings whose only remaining 
beauties were those of age. 

Though he had resolved yesterday not to return to 
Tappahannock, he found himself presently retracing, 
almost without an effort of will, the road which he 
had travelled so heavily in the night. Something 
between sunrise and sunset had renewed his courage 
and altered his determination. Was it only the 
wasted strength which had returned to him in his 
sleep? Or was it—he hesitated at the thought—the 
flush of shame which had burned his face when the 
girl’s lantern had flashed over him out of the dark- 
ness? In that pitiless illumination it was as if not 
only his roughened surface, but his secret sin was 
laid bare; and he had felt again all the hideous 
publicity that had touched him and put him as one 
apart in the court-room. Though he had outgrown 
the sin, he knew now that he must carry the scar 
of it until his death; and he knew, also, that the 
reality of his punishment had been in the spirit and 
not in the law. 

For a while he walked rapidly in the direction of 
Tappahannock; then sitting down in the sunshine 
upon the roadside, he ate the piece of cornbread he 
had saved last night from his supper. It would be 
several hours at least before he might hope to find 
the warehouses open for the day, so he sat patiently 
eating his bread under the bared boughs of a young 
peach-tree, while he watched the surface of the long 
white road which appeared to hold for him as much 


THE RETURN TO TAPPAHANNOCK = 33 


despondency as freedom. <A farmer driving a spotted 
cow to market spoke to him presently in a friendly 
voice; and rising to his feet, he overtook the man and 
fell into the jogging pace which was rendered necessary 
by the reluctance of the animal to proceed. 

‘‘T declar’ the sense in them thar critters do beat. 
all,” remarked the farmer, after an ineffectual tug 
at the rope he held. ‘“‘She won’t be drove no more ’n 
a woman will—her head is what she wants no matter 
whar it leads her.” 

“Can you tell me,” inquired Ordway, when they 
had started again upon the advance, “the name 
of the old house I passed a mile or so along the road?”’ 

‘“‘Oh, you mean Cedar Hill, I reckon!—thar now,, 
Betsey, that thar toad ain’t a turnip!” 

*‘Cedar Hill, is it? Weil, they appear to be doing 
their level best to get rid of the cedars.”’ 

‘‘Mr. Beverly did that—not Miss Em’ly. Miss. 
Emly dotes on them trees jest the same as if they 
were made of flesh and blood.” 

“But the place belongs to Mr. Beverly, I presume?’” 

“If thar’s a shingle of it that ain’t mortgaged, I 
reckon it does—though for that matter Miss Em’ly 
is overseer and manager, besides teachin’ every day 
in the public school of Tappahannock. Mr. Beverly ’s. 
got a soft heart in his body—all the Brookes had that. 
they say—but the Lord who made him knows that. 
he ain’t overblessed with brains. He used to specu- 
late with most of the family money, but as luck would 
have it he always speculated wrong. Then he took 
to farmin’, but he’s got such a slow gentlemanly 


34 THE ANCIENT LAW 


way about him that nothin’ he puts in the ground ever 
has spirit enough to come up agin. His wife’s just 
like him—she was Miss Amelia Meadows, his second 
cousin from the up-country, and when the children 
kept on comin’ so thick and fast, as is the Lord’s 
way with po’ folks, people said thar warn’t nothin’ 
ahead of ’em but starvation. But Miss Em’ly she 
come back from teachin’ somewhar down South an’ 
_ undertook to run the whole place single-handed. 

Things are pickin’ up a little now, they say—she ’s 
got a will of her own, has Miss Em’ly, but thar ain’t 
anybody in these parts that would n’t work for her 
till they dropped. She sent for me last Monday to 
help her mend her henhouse, and though I was puttin’ 
a new roof over my wife’s head, I dropped everything 
I had and went. That was the day Mr. Beverly cut 
down the cedars.” 

“So Miss Emily didn’t know of it?” 

“‘She was in school, suh—you see she teaches in 
Tappahannock from nine till three, so Mr. Beverly 
chose that time to sell the avenue to young Tom 
Myers. He’s a sly man, is Mr. Beverly, for all his 
soft, slow ways, and if Young Tom had been on time 
he’d have had half the avenue belted before Miss 
Em’ly got back from school. But he got in some 
mess or other at the store, and he was jest hewin’ 
like thunder at his sixth cedar, when uv come Miss 
Em’ly on that old white horse she rides. Good 
Lord! I hope I ll never see anybody turn so white 
agin as she did when her eyes lighted on them fallen 
trees. ‘Beverly,’ she called out in a loud, high voice, 


THE RETURN TO TAPPAHANNOCK = 35 


‘have you dared to sell the cedars?’ Mr. Beverly 
looked a little sick as if his stomach had gone aginst 
him of a sudden, but he stood right up on the trunk 
of a tree, and mumbled something about presarvin’ 
useless timber when the children had no shoes an’ 
stockings to thar feet. Then Miss Em’ly gave him 
a look that scorched like fire, and she rode straight 
up to Myers on her old horse and said as quiet as 
death: ‘Put up your axe, Tom, I ‘ll give you back 
your money. How much have you paid him down?’ 
When Young Tom looked kind of sheepish and said: 
‘a hundred dollars,’ I saw her eyelids flicker, but she 
did n’t hesitate an instant. ‘You shall have it within 
an hour on my word of honour,’ she answered, ‘can 
you wait?’ ‘I reckon I can wait all day, Miss,’ said 
Young Tom—and then she jumped down from her 
horse, and givin’ me the bridle, caught up her skirt 
and ran indoors. In a minute she came flying out 
agin and before we had time to catch our breath 
she was ridin’ for dear life back to town. ‘You ’d 
better go on with yo’ work,’ said Mr. Beverly in his 
soft way, but Young Tom picked up his axe, and 
sat down on the big stump behind him. ‘I reckon 
I can take her word better ’n yours, Mr. Beverly,’ he 
answered,’ an’ ‘I reckon you can, too, Young Tom,’ 
said I ne 

“But how did she raise the money?” inquired 
Ordway. 

“That ’s what nobody knows, suh, except her and 
one other. Some say she sold a piece of her mother’s 
old jewelry—a locket or something she had put by— 





36 THE ANCIENT LAW 


‘and some believe still that she borrowed it from 
Robert Baxter or Jasper Trend. Whichever way it 
‘was, she came ridin’ up within the hour on her old 
white horse with the notes twisted tight in her 
handkerchief. She was mighty quiet, then, but when 
‘it was over, great Lord, what a temper she was in. 
I declar’ she would have struck Mr. Beverly with 
the sour gum twig she used for a whip if J had n’t 
‘slipped in between ’em an’ caught her arm. Then 
she lashed him with her tongue till he seemed to 
wither and shrink all over.” 

“‘And served him right, God bless her!’ said 
‘Ordway. 

“That ’s so, suh, but Mr. Beverly ain’t a bad man— 
he ’s jest soft.” 

“Yet your Miss Emily still sticks to him, it 
seems?” 

“If she did n’t the farm would n’t hold together a 
‘week. What she makes from teachin’ is about all 
they have to live on in my opinion. Last summer, 
too, she started raisin’ garden things an’ poultry, an’ 
she ’d have got quite a thrivin’ business if she had 
had any kind of help. Then in July she tried her 
hand at puttin’ up preserves and jellies to send to 
them big stores in the North.”’ 

Ordway remembered the cheerful authority in her 
voice, the little cold red hands that had offered him 
his supper; and bis heart contracted as it did at the 
memory of his daughter Alice. Yet it was not 
pity alone that moved him, for mingled with the 
appeal to his sympathy there was something which 


THE RETURN TO TAPPAHANNOCK 37 


awoke in him the bitter agony of remorse. So the 
girl in the red cape could endure poverty such as this 
with honour! At the thought his past sin and his 
present disgrace appeared to him not only as crime 
but as cowardliness. He recalled the angry 
manager of the cotton mills, but there was no 
longer resentment in his mind either against the 
individual or against society. Instead it seemed to 
him that all smaller emotions dissolved in a tender- 
ness which placed this girl and Alice apart with the 
other good and inspiring memories of his life. As 
he walked on in silence a little incident of ten years 
before returned to his thoughts, and he remembered 
the day he had found his child weeping beside a 
crippled beggar on his front steps. 

When, a little later, they reached Tappahannock, 
the farmer turned with his reluctant cow into one 
of the smaller paths which led across the common 
on the edge of the town. As it was still too early to 
apply for work, Ordway sat down on a flat stone 
before an iron gate and watched the windows along 
the street for any signs of movement or life within. 
At length several frowsy Negro maids leaned out 
while the wooden shutters swung slowly back 
against the walls; then a milk wagon driven by a 
small boy clattered noisily round the corner, and in 
response to the shrill whistle of the driver, the doors 
opened hurriedly and the Negro maids rushed, with 
outstretched pitchers, down the gravelled walks to the 
iron gates. Presently an appetising odour of bacon 
reached Ordway’s nostrils; and in the house across 


38 THE ANCIENT LAW 


the street a woman with her hair done up on pins, 
came to the window and began grinding coffee in a 
wooden mill. Not until eight o’clock did the town 
open its gates and settle itself to the day’s work. 

When the doors of the warehouses were fastened 
back, Ordway turned into the main street again, 
and walked slowly downhill until he came to the 
faded brick archway where the group of men had sat 
smoking the evening before. Now there was an air 
of movement in the long building which had appeared 
as mere dim vacancy at the hour of sunset. Men 
were passing in and out of the brick entrance, from 
which a thin coat of whitewash was peeling in 
splotches; covered wagons half filled with tobacco 
were standing, unhitched, along the walls; huge bags 
of fresh fertilisers were thrown carelessly in corners; 
and in the centre of the great floor, an old Negro, with 
a birch broom tied tegether with coloured string, was 
sweeping into piles the dried stems left after yester- 
day’s sales. As he swept, a little cloud of pungent 
dust rose before the strokes of his broom and floated 
through the brick archway out into the street. 

This morning there was even less attention paid to 
Ordway’s presence than there had been at the closing 
hour. Planters hurried back and forth preparing lots 
for the opening sale; a wagon drove into the building, 
and the driver got down over the muddy wheel and 
lifted out several willow crates through which Ordway 
could catch a glimpse of the yellow sun-cured leaf. 
The old Negro swept briskly, piling the trash into 
heaps which would finally be ground into snuff or 


THE RETURN TO TAPPAHANNOCK — 39 


used as a cheap grade of fertiliser. Lean hounds 
wandered to and fro, following the covered wagons 
and sniffing suspiciously at the loose plants arranged 
in separate lots in the centre of the floor. 

“Is Baxter here this morning?’ Ordway asked 
presently of a countryman who lounged on a pile 
of bags near the archway. 

“IT reckon you ll find him in his office,” replied 
the man, as he spat lazily out into the street; “that 
thar ’s his door,’”’ he added, pointing to a little room 
on the right of the entrance—‘‘I seed him go in an’ 
I ain’t seed him come out.”’ 

Nodding his thanks for the information, Ordway 
crossed the building and rapped lightly on the door. 
In response to a loud ‘“‘come in,”’ he turned the knob 
and stood next instant face to face with the genial 
giant of the evening before. 

““Good-morning, Mr. Baxter, I’ve come back 
again,” he said. 

““Good-morning!”’ responded Baxter, “I see you 
have.” 

In the fuil daylight Baxter appeared to have 
increased in effect if not in quantity, and as Ordway 
looked at him now, he felt himself to be in the presence 
less of a male creature than of an embodied benevolent 
impulse. His very flabbiness of feature added in a 
measure to the expansive generosity of mouth and 
chin; and slovenly, unwashed, half-shaven as he was, 
Baxter’s spirit dominated not only his fellow men, but 
the repelling effect of his own unkempt exterior. 
To meet his glance was to become suddenly intimate: 


’ 


40 THE ANCIENT LAW 


to hear him speak was to feel that he had shaken 
you by the hand. 

‘““T hoped you might have come to see things differ- 
ently this morning,’’ said Ordway. 

Baxter looked him over with his soft yet penetrating 
eyes, his gaze travelling slowly from the coarse boots 
covered with red clay to the boyish smile on the dark, 
weatherbeaten face. 

“You did not tell me what kind of work you were 
looking for,’ he observed at last. ‘“‘Do you want 
to sweep out the warehouse or to keep the books?”’ 

Ordway laughed. ‘I prefer to keep the books, 
but I can sweep out the warehouse,”’ he replied. 

“You can—can you?” said Baxter. His pipe, 
which was never out of his hand except when it was 
in his mouth, began to turn gray, and putting it 

between his teeth, he sucked hard at the stem for 
- a minute. 

-“You’re an educated man, then?’”’ 

“I’ve been to college—do you mean that?” 

“You ’re fit for a clerk’s position?”’ 

‘‘I am sure of it.” 

“Where did you work last?”’ 

Ordway’s hesitation was barely Sercoutitte, 

‘“‘T ’ve been in business,’’ he answered. 

“On your own hook?’’ inquired Baxter. 

“Yes, on my own hook.” 

“But you could n’t make a living at it?”’ 

“No; I gave it up for several reasons.”’ 

“Well, I don’t know your reasons, my man,”’ 
observed Baxter, drily, ‘but I like your face.”’ 


THE RETURN TO TAPPAHANNOCK - 41 


“Thank you,’’ said Ordway, and he laughed again 
with the sparkling gaiety which leaped first to his 
blue eyes. 

“And so you expect me to take you without know- 
ing a darn thing about you?’’ demanded Baxter. 

Ordway nodded gravely. 

“Yes, I hope that is what you will do,’”’ he answered. 

‘“‘I may ask your name, I reckon, may n’t 1?—if you 
have no particular objection.”’ 

“I don’t mind telling you it’s Smith,” said Ordway, 
with his gaze on a huge pamphlet entitled ‘‘Smith’s 
Almanac” lying on Baxter’s desk. ‘‘ Daniel Smith.” 

““Smith,’’ repeated Baxter. ‘‘Well, it ain’t hard 
toremember. If I warn’ta blamed fool, I’d let you 
go,’ he added thoughtfully, “‘but there ain’t much 
doubt, I reckon, about my being a blamed fool.” 

He rose from his chair with difficulty, and steadying 
his huge body, moved to the door, which he flung 
open with a jerk. 

“If you ’ve made up your mind dead sure to butt 
in, you might as well begin with the next sale,’’ 
he said. 


CHAPTER IV 
THE DREAM OF DANIEL SMITH 


He. Hap been recommended for lodging to a certain 
Mrs. Twine, and at five o’clock, when the day’s work 
at Baxter’s was over, he started up the street in a 
bewildered search for her house, which he had been 
told was situated immediately beyond the first turn 
on the brow of the hill. When he reached the corner 
there was no one in sight except a small boy who 
sat, crying loudly, astride a little whitewashed wooden 
vate. Beyond the boy there was a narrow yard filled 
with partly dried garments hung on clothes lines, 
which stretched from a young locust tree near the 
sidewalk to the front porch, where a man with a red 
nose was reading the local newspaper. As the man 
with the red nose paid no attention to the loud 
lamentations of.the child, Ordway stopped by the 
gate and inquired sympathetically if he could be 
of help. 

“Oh, he ain’t hurt,’”’ remarked the man, throwing 
a side glance over his paper, “‘he al’ays yells like that 
when his Ma’s done scrubbed him.” 

““She ’s washed me so clean that I feel naked,” 
howled the boy. 

“Well, you ‘Il get over that in a year’s time,” 
observed Ordway cheerfully, ‘‘so suppose you leave 

42 


THE DREAM OF DANIEL SMITH 43 


off a minute now and show me the way to Mrs. 
Twine’s.”’ 

At his request the boy stopped crying instantly, 
and stared up at him while the dirty tearmarks dried 
slowiy on his cheeks. 

“Thar ain’t no way,” he replied solemnly, ‘* ’cause 
she ’s my ma.”’ 

“Then jump down quickly and run indoors and 
tell her I ’d like to see her.”’ 

‘°T ain't no use. She won’t come.” 

*“Well, go and ask her. I was told to come here to 
look for board and lodging.”’ 

He glanced inquiringly at the man on the porch, 
who, engrossed in the local paper, was apparently 
oblivious of the conversation at the gate. 

‘*‘She won’t come ’cause she ’s washin’ the rest of 
us,” returned the boy, as he swung himself to the 
ground, ‘‘thar ’re six of us an’ she ain’t done but two. 
That ’s Lemmy she’s got hold of now. Can’t you 
hear him holler?”’ 

He planted his feet squarely on the board walk, 
looked back at Ordway over his shoulder, and 
departed reluctantly with the message for his mother. 
At the end of a quarter of an hour, when Ordway 
had entered the gate and sat down in the cold wind . 
on the front steps, the door behind him opened with 
a jar, and a large, crimson, untidy woman, splashed 
with soapsuds, appeared like an embodied tempest 
upon the threshold. 

“Canty says you ’ve come to look at the dead 
gentleman’s room, suh,’’ she began in a high voice, 


44 THE ANCIENT LAW 


approaching her point with a directness which lost 
none of its force because of the panting vehemence 
with which she spoke. 

‘Baxter told me I might find board with you,” 
explained Ordway in her first breathless pause. 

“To be sure he may have the dead gentleman’s 
room, Mag,’’ put in the man on the porch, folding 
his newspaper, with a shiver, as he rose to his feet. 

“IT warn’t thinkin’ about lettin’ that room agin’,”’ 
said Mrs. Twine, crushing her husband’s budding 
interference by the completeness with which she 
ignored his presence. ‘‘ But it’s jest as well, Ireckon, 
for a defenceless married woman to have a stranger 
in the house. Though for the matter of that,’’ she 
concluded in a burst of domestic confidence, ‘‘the 
woman that ain’t a match for her own husband with- 
out outside help ain’t deservin’ of the pleasure an’ 
the blessin’ of one.’”’ Then as the man with the red 
nose slunk shamefacedly into the passage, she added 
in an undertone to Ordway, “‘and now if you ’Il jest 
step inside, I Il show you the spare room that I ’ve 
got to let.” 

She led the way indoors, scolding shrilly as she 
passed through the hall, and up the little staircase, 
where several half-dressed children were riding, with 
shrieks of delight, down the balustrade. ‘‘You 
need n’t think you ’ve missed a scrubbing because 
company ’s come,’ she remarked angrily, as she 
stooped to box the ears of a small girl lying flat on 
her stomach upon the landing. ‘‘Such is my taste 
for cleanness,’’ she explained to Ordway, “‘that when 


THE DREAM OF DANIEL SMITH 45 


my hands once tech the soap it ’s as much as I can do 
to keep ’em back from rubbin’ the skin off. Thar ’re 
times even when the taste is so ragin’ in my breast 
that I can hardly wait for Saturday night to come 
around. Yet I ain’t no friend to license whether 
it be in whiskey or in soap an’ water. Temperance 
is my passion and that ’s why, I suppose, I came to 
marry a drunkard.” 

With this tragic confession, uttered in a matter 
of fact manner, she produced a key from the pocket 
of her blue gingham apron, and ushered Ordway into 
a small, poorly furnished room, which overlooked 
the front street and the two bared locust trees in the 
yard. 

“‘T kin let you have this at three dollars a week,” 
she said, ‘‘provided you ’re content to do yo’ own 
reachin’ at the table. Thar ain’t any servant now 
except a twelve year old darkey.” 

“Yes, I ‘ll take it,” returned Ordway, almost 
cheerfully ; and when he had agreed definitely as to 
the amount of service he was to receive, he closed 
the creaking door behind her, and looked about 
the crudely furnished apartment with a sense of 
ownership such as he had not felt since the afternoon 
upon which he had stood in his wife’s sitting-room 
awaiting his arrest. He thought of the Florentine 
gilding, the rich curtains, the long mirrors, the 
famous bronze Mercury and the Corot landscape 
with the sunlight upon it—and then of the terrible 
oppression in which these familiar objects had seemed 
closing in upon him and smothering him into 


46 THE ANCIENT LAW 


unconsciousness. The weight was lifted now, and he 
breathed freely while his gaze rested on the com- 
mon pine bedstead, the scarred washstand, with the 
broken pitcher, the whitewashed walls, the cane 
chairs, the rusted scuttle, filled with cheap coal, 
and the unpainted table holding a glass lamp with 
a smoked chimney. From the hall below he could 
hear the scolding voice of Mrs. Twine, but 
neither the shrill sound nor the poor room pro- 
duced in him the smothered anguish he felt even 
to-day at the memory of the Corot landscape bathed 
in sunlight. 

An hour later, when he came upstairs again as an 
escape from the disorder of Mrs. Twine’s supper 
table, he started a feeble blaze in the grate, which 
was half full of ashes, and after lighting the glass 
lamp, sat watching the shadows flicker to and fro 
on the whitewashed wall. His single possession, 
a photograph of his wife taken with her two children, 
rested against the brick chimney piece, and as he 
looked at it now it seemed to stand in no closer 
relationship to his life than did one of the brilliant 
chromos he had observed crnamenting the walls of 
Mrs. Twine’s dining-room. His old life, indeed, 
appeared remote, artificial, conjured from unrealities 
—it was as if he had moved lightly upon the painted 
surface of things, until at last a false step had broken 
through the thin covering and he had plunged in a 
single instant against the concrete actuality. The 
shock had stunned him, yet he realised now that he 
could never return to his old sheltered outlook—-to 


THE DREAM OF DANIEL SMITH 47 


his pleasant fiction—for he had come too close to . 
experience ever to be satisfied again with falsehood. 

The photograph upon the mantel was the single 
remaining link which held him to-day to his past 
life—to his forfeited identity. In the exquisite, 
still virgin face of his wife, draped for effect in a scarf 
of Italian lace—he saw embodied the one sacred 
memory to which as Daniel Smith he might still 
cling with honour. The face was perfect, the expres- 
sion of motherhood which bent, flamelike, over the 
small boy and girl, was perfect also; and the pure soul 
of the woman seemed to him to have formed both 
face and expression after its own divine image. In 
the photograph, as in his memory, her beauty was 
touched always by some rare quality of remoteness, 
as if no merely human conditions could ever entirely 
compass so ethereal a spirit. The passion which had 
rocked his soul had left her serenity unshaken, and 
even sorrow had been powerless to leave its impress 
or disfigurement upon her features. 

As the shadows flickered out on the walls, the room 
grew suddenly colder. Rising he replenished the 
fire, and then going over to the bed, he flung himself, 
still dressed, under the patchwork quilt from which 
the wool was protruding in places. He was thinking 
of the morning eighteen years ago when he had first 
seen her as she came, with several girl companions, out 
of the old church in the little town of Botetourt. It 
was a Christmas during his last year at Harvard, 
when moved by a sudden interest in his Southern 
associations, he had gone down for two days to his 


48 THE ANCIENT LAW 


childhood’s home in Virginia. Though the place was 
falling gradually to ruin, his maiden great-aunt still 
lived tnere in a kind of luxurious poverty; and at the 
sight of her false halo of gray curls, he had remem- 
bered, almost with a start of surprise, the morning 
when he had seen the convict at the little wayside 
station. The station, the country, the muddy roads, 
and even the town of Botetourt were unchanged, but 
he himself belonged now to another and what he felt 
tobealargerworld. Everything had appeared provin- 
cial and amusing to his eyes—until as he passed on 
Christmas morning by the quaint old churchyard, he 
had seen Lydia Preston standing in the sunshine amid 
the crumbling tombstones of several hundred years. 
Under the long black feather in her hat, her charming 
eyes had dwelt on him kindly for a minute, and in that 
minute it had seemed to him that the racial ideal 
slurnbering in his brain had responded quickly to 
his startled blood. Afterward they had told him that 
she was only nineteen, a Southern beauty of great 
promise, and the daughter of old Adam Preston, who 
had made and lost a fortune in the last ten years. 
But these details seemed te him to have no relation 
to the face he had seen under the biack feather against 
the ivy-covered walls of the old church. The next 
evening they had danced together at a ball; he had 
carried her fan, a trivial affair of lace and satin, away 
in his pocket, and ten days later he had returned, 
flushed with passion, to finish his course at Harvard. 
. Love had put wings to his ambition; the following 
year he had stood at the head of his class, and before 


THE DREAM OF DANIEL SMITH 49 


the summer was over he had married her and started 
brilliantly in his career. There had been only success ° 
in the beginning. When had the tide turned so 
suddenly? he wondered, and when had he begun to 
drift into the great waters where men are washed 
down and lost? 

Lying on the bed now in the firelight, he shivered 
and drew the quilt closer about his knees. She had _ 
loved beauty, riches, dignity, religion—she had loved 
her children when they came; but had she ever 
really loved him—the Daniel Ordway whom she had 
married? Were all pure women as passionless—as 
utterly detached—as she had shown herself to him 
from the beginning? And was her coldness, as he 
had always believed, but the outward body of that 
spiritual grace for which he had loved her? He had 
lavished abundantly out of his stormy nature; he had 
spent his immortal soul upon her in desperate deter- 
mination to possess. her utterly at her own price; 
and yet had she ever belonged to him, he questioned 
now, even in the supreme hours of their deepest 
union? Had her very innocence shut him out from 
her soul forever? 

In the end the little world had closed over them 
both; he had felt himself slipping further—further— 
had made frantic efforts to regain his footing; and 
had gone down hopelessly at last. Those terrible 
years before his arrest crowded like minutes into his 
brain, and he knew now that there had been relief— 
comfort—almost tranquillity in his life in prison. 
The strain was lifted at last, and the days when he 


50 THE ANCIENT LAW 


had moved in dull hope or acute despair through 
the crowd in Wall Street were over forever. To 
hold a place in the little world one needed great 
wealth; and it had seemed to him in the time of 
temptation that this wealth was not a fugitive 
possession, but an inherent necessity-—a thing 
which belonged to the inner structure of Lydia’s 
nature. 

A shudder ran over him, while he drew a convulsive 
breath like one in physical pain. The slow minutes 
in which he had waited for a rise in the market 
were still ticking in agony somewhere in his brain. 
Time moved on, yet those minutes never passed—his 
memory had become like the face of a clock where 
the hands pointed, motionless, day or night, to the 
same hour. Then hours, days, weeks, months, years, 
when he lived with ruin in his thoughts and the sound 
of merriment, which was like the pipe of hollow flutes, 
in his ears. At the end it came almost suddenly— 
the blow for which he had waited, the blow which 
brought something akin to relief because it ended the 
quivering torture of his suspense, and compelled, for 
the hour at least, decisive action. He had known 
that before evening he would be under arrest, and 
yet he had walked slowly along Fifth Avenue from 
his office to his home; he recalled now that he had 
even joked with a club wit, who had stopped him at 
the corner to divulge the latest bit of gossip. At 
the very instant when he felt himself to be approach- 
ing ruin in his house, he remembered that he had 
complained a littie irritably of the breaking wrapper 


THE DREAM OF DANIEL SMITH 51 


of his cigar. Yet he was thinking then that he must 
reach his home in time to prevent his wife from 
keeping a luncheon engagement, of which she had 
spoken to him at breakfast; and ten minutes later it 
was with a sensation of relief that he met the 
blank face of his butler in the hall. On the 
staircase his daughter ran after him, her short 
white, beruffled skirts standing out stiffly like the 
skirts of a ballet dancer. She was taking her music 
lesson, she cried out, and she called to him to come 
into the music room and hear how wonderfully she 
could run her scales! Her blue eyes, which were 
his eyes in a child’s face, looked joyously up at him 
from under the thatch of dark curls which she had 
inherited from him, not from her blond mother. 

“Not now, Alice,’’ he answered, almost impatiently, 
“not now—I will come a little later.’’ 

Then she darted back, and the stumbling music 
preceded him up the staircase to the door of his 
wife’s dressing-room. When he entered Lydia was 
standing before her mirror, fastening a spotted 
veil with a diamond butterfly at the back of her 
blond head; and as she turned smilingly toward 
him, he put out his hand with a gesture of irri- 
tation. 

“Take that veil off, Lydia, I can’t see you for 
the spots,’”’ he said. 

Complaisant always, she unfastened the diamond 
butterfly without a word, and taking off the veil, 
flung it carelessly across the golden-topped bottles 
upon her dressing-table. 


52 THE ANCIENT LAW 


“You look ill,” she said with her charming smile; 
‘“‘shall I ring for Marie to bring you whiskey?”’ 

At her words he turned from her, driven by a tor- 
ment of pity which caused his voice to sound harsh 
and constrained in his own ears. 

‘““No—no—don’t put that on again,’’ he protested, 
for while she waited she had taken up the spotted 
veil and the diamond pin. 

Something in his tone startled her into attention, 
and moving a step forward, she stood before him on a 
white bearskin rug. Her face had hardly changed, 
yet in some way she seemed to have put him at a 
distance, and he felt all at once that he had never. 
known her. 

From the room downstairs he heard Alice’s music 
lesson go on at broken intervais, the uncertain scales 
she ran now stopping, now beginning violently again. 
The sound wrought suddenly on his nerves like anger, 
and he felt that his voice was querulous in spite of 
the torment of pity at his heart. 

“There’s no use putting on vour veil,’”’ he said, 
‘‘a warrant is out for my arrest and i must wait here 
till it comes.” 


His memory stopped now, as if it had snapped 
suddenly beneath the strain. After this there was a 
mere blank of existence upon which people and objects 
moved without visibleimpression. From that minute 
to this one appeared so short a time that he started 
up half expecting to hear Alice’s scales filling Mrs. 


THE DREAM OF DANIEL SMITH 53 


Twine’s empty lodgings. Then his eyes fell on the 
whitewashed walls, the smoking lamp, the bare table, 
and the little square window with the branches of 
the locust tree frosted against the pane. 

Rising from the bed, he fell on his knees and pressed 
his quivering face to the patchwork quilt. 

‘Give me a new life, O God—give me a new life!’’ 


CHAPTER V 
At TAPPAHANNOCK 


Arter a sleepless night, he rose as soon as the dawn 
had broken, and sitting down before the pine table 
wrote a letter to Lydia, on a sheet of paper which 
had evidently been left in the drawer by the former 
lodger. ‘It isn’t likely that you Il ever want me,” 
he added at the end, ‘‘but if you should happen to, 
remember that I am yours, as I have always been, for 
whatever I am worth.’ When he had sealed the 
envelope and written her name above that of the 
town of Botetourt, he put it into his pocket and went 
down to the dining-room, where he found Mrs. Twine 
pouring steaming coffee into a row of broken cups. 
A little mulatto girl, with her hair plaited in a dozen 
fine braids, was placing a dish of fried bacon at one 
end of the walnut-coloured oil-cloth on the table, 
around which the six children, already clothed and 
hungry, were beating an impatient tattoo with pewter 
spoons. Bill Twine, the father of the family, was 
evidently sleeping off a drunken headache—a weak- 
ness which appeared to afford his wife endless 
material for admonition and philosophy. 

‘Thar now, Canty,’’ she was remarking to her son, 
“‘yo’ po’ daddy may not be anything to be proud of 
as a man, but I reckon he’s as big an example as 

54 


AT TAPPAHANNOCK 55 


you ll ever see. He’s had sermons p’inted at him 
from the pulpit; they ’ve took him up twice to the 
police court, an’ if you ’ll believe me, suh,”’ she added 
with a kind of outraged pride to Ordway, ‘“‘thar’s 
been a time when they ’ve had out the whole fire 
department to protect me.” 

The coffee though poor was hot, and while Ordway 
drank it, he listened with an attention not unmixed 
with sympathy to Mrs. Twine’s continuous flow of 
speech. She was coarse and shrewish and unshapely, 
but his judgment was softened by the marks of anxious 
thought on her forehead and the disfigurements of 
honest labour on her hands. Any toil appeared to 
him now to be invested with peculiar dignity; and 
he felt, sitting there at her slovenly breakfast table, — 
that he was closer to the enduring heart of humanity 
than he had been among the shallow refinements of 
his past life. Mrs. Twine was unpleasant, but at 
her worst he felt her to be the real thing. 

“Not that I’m blamin’ Bill, suh, as much as some 
folks,’”’ she proceeded charitably, while sne helped 
her youngest child to gravy, ‘‘for it made me down- 
right sick myself to hear them carryin’ on over his 
beatin’ his own wife jest as much as if he’d been 
beatin’ somebody else’s. An’ I ain’t one, when it 
comes to that, to put up with a white-livered, knock- 
kneed, pulin’ sort of a critter, as I told the Jedge 
a-settin’ upon his bench. When a woman is obleeged 
to take a strappin’ thar’s some real satisfaction in 
her feelin’ that she takes it from a man—an’ the 
kind that would lay on softly with never a broken head 


gh THE ANCIENT LAW 


to show for it—well, he ain’t the kind, suh, that I could 
have helt in any respect an’ honour. And as to that, 
as I said to ’em right then an’ thar, take the manly 
health an’ spirit out o’ Bill, an’ he’s jest about as 
decent an’ law abidin’ as the rest. Why, when ke 
was laid up with malaria, he never so much as rized 
his hand agin me, an’ it Il be my belief untwel my 
dyin’ day that chills an’ fever will keep a man moral 
when all the sermons sence Moses will leave him 
unteched. Feed him low an’ work him hard, an’ 
you kin make a saint out of most any male critter, 
that’s my way of thinkin’.” 

While she talked she was busily selecting the 
choicest bit of bacon for Bill’s plate, and as Ordway 
left the house a little later, he saw her toiling up the 
staircase with her husband’s breakfast on a tin tray 
in her hands. 

“Tf you think I’m goin’ to set an’ wait all day for 
you to get out o’ bed, you ’ve jest about clean lost 
yo’ wits, Biil Twine,’ she remarked in furious tones, 
as she flung open a door on the landing above. 

Out of doors Ordway found that the wind had died 
down, though a sharp edge of frost was still in the air. 
The movement of the day had already begun; and 
as he passed the big house on the brow of the hill 
he saw a pretty girl, with her hair tied back with a 
velvet ribbon, run along the gravelled walk to meet the 
postman at the gate. A little farther, when he had 
reached the corner, he turned back to hand his letter 
to the postman, and found to his surprise that the 
pretty girl was still gazing after him. No possible 


AT TAPPAHANNOCK 57 


interest could attach to her in his thoughts; and with 
a careless acknowledgment of her beauty, she faded 
from his consciousness as rapidly as if she had been 
a ray of sunshine which he had admired as he passed 
along. Then as he turned into the main street at 
the corner, he saw that Emily Brooke was riding 
slowly up the hill on her old white horse. She still 
wore her red cape, which fell over the saddle on one 
side, and completely hid the short riding-skirt beneath. 
On her head there was a small knitted Tam-o’-shanter 
cap, and this, with the easy freedom of her seat in 
the saddle, gave her an air which was gallant rather 
than graceful. The more feminine adjective hardly 
seemed to apply to her at the moment; she looked 
brave, strong, buoyant, a creature that had not as 
yet become aware of its sex. Yet she was older, he 
discovered now, than he had at first imagined her to 
be. In the barn he had supposed her age to be not 
more than twenty years; seen in the morning light 
it was impossible to decide whether she was a year 
younger or ten years older than he had believed. 
The radiant energy in her look belonged, after all, 
less to the accident of youth than to some enduring 
quality of spirit. 

As she neared him, she looked up from her horse’s 
neck, rested her eyes upon him for an instant, and 
smniled brightly, much as a charming boy might have 
done. Then, just as she was about to pass on, the 
girth of her saddle slipped under her, and she was 
thrown lightly to the ground, while the old horse 
stopped and stood perfectly motionless above her. 


58 THE ANCIENT LAW 


“‘My skirt has caught in the stirrup,’’ she said to 
Ordway, and while he bent to release her, he noticed 
that she clung, not to his arm, but to the neck of the 
horse for support. 

To his surprise there was neither embarrassment 
nor amusement in her voice. She spoke with the 
cool authority which had impressed him during the 
incident of the ram’s attack upon ‘‘Sis Mehitable.”’ 

‘“‘T don’t think it is quite safe yet,’’ he said, after he 
had drawn the rotten girth as tight as he dared. ‘“‘It 
looks as if it would n’t last, you see.”’ 

‘“Well, I dare say, it may be excused after forty 
years of service,’”’ she returned, smiling. 

“What? this saddle? It does look a little quaint 
when one examines it.”’ 

‘““Oh, it’s been repaired, but even then one must 
forgive an old servant for growing decrepit.” 

“Then you ’ll ride it again?’’ he asked, seeing that 
she was about to mount. 

‘“‘Of course—this isn’t my first tumble—but Major 
expects them now and he knows how to behave. So 
do I,” she added, laughing, ‘‘ you see it doesn’t take 
me by surprise.” 

“Yes, I see it does n’t,’’ he answered gaily. 

‘Then if you chance to be about the next time it 
happens, I hope it won’t disturb you either,’’ she 
remarked, as she rode up the hill. 

The meeting lingered in Ordway’s mind with a 
freshness which was associated less with the incident 
itself than with some vivid quality in the appearance 
of the girl. Her face, her voice, her carriage—even 


AT TAPPAHANNOCK 59 


the little brown curls blowing on her temples, all 
united in his thoughts to form a memory in which 
Alice appeared to hold a place. Why should this 
country girl, he wondered, bring back to him so 
clearly the figure of his daughter? 

But there was no room for a memory in his life 
just now, and by the time he reached Baxter’s Ware- 
house, he had forgotten the interest aroused in him 
a moment before. Baxter had not yet appeared in 
his office, but two men, belonging evidently to the 
labouring class, were talking together under the brick 
archway. When Ordway joined them they did not 
interrupt their conversation, which he found, after 
a minute, to concern the domestic and financial 
troubles of the one whom he judged to be the poorer 
of the two. He was a meanly clad, wretched looking 
workman, with a shock of uncombed sandy hair, 
a cowed manner, and the expression of one who has 
been beaten into apathy rather than into submission. 
A sordid pathos in his voice and figure brought 
Ordway a step closer to his side, and after a moment’s 
careless attention, he found his mind adjusting itself 
to the small financial problems in which the man 
had become entangled. The workman had been 
forced to borrow upon his pathetic personal securities; 
and in meeting from year to year the exorbitant rate 
of interest, he had paid back several times the sum 
of the original debt. Now his wife was ill, with an 
incurable cancer; he had no hope, as he advanced 
beyond middle age, of any increase in his earning 
capacity, and the debt under which he had struggled 


60 THE ANCIENT LAW 


so long had become at the end an intolerable burden. 
His wife had begged him to consult a lawyer—but 
who, he questioned doggedly, would take an interest 
in him since he had no money for a fee? He was 
afraid of lawyers anyway, for he could give you a 
hundred cases where they had stood banded together 
against the poor. 

As Ordway listened to the story, he felt for an 
instant a return of his youthful enthusiasm, and 
standing there amid the tobacco stems in Baxter’s 
warehouse, he remembered a great flour trust from 
which he had withdrawn because it seemed to him 
to bear unjustly upon the small, isolated farmers. 
Beyond this he went back still further to his college 
days, when during his vacation, he had read Virginia 
law in the office of his uncle, Richard Ordway, in the 
town of Botetourt. He could see the shining rows 
of legal volumes in the walnut bookcases, the engrav- 
ing of Latane’s Burial, framed in black wood above 
the mantel, and against this background the silent, 
gray haired, self-righteous old man so like his father. 
Through the window, he could see still the sparrows 
that built in the ivied walls of the old church. 

With a start he came back to the workman, who 
was unfolding his troubles in an abandon of misery 
under the archway. 

“Tf you ll talk things over with me to-night when 
we get through work, I think I may be able 
to straighten them out for you,” he said. 

The man stared at him out of his dogged eyes with 
a helpless incredulity. 


AT TAPPAHANNOCK 61 


‘But I ain’t got any money,” he responded sullenly, 
as if driven to the defensive. 

““Well, we ‘ll see,” said Ordway, “‘I don’t want your 
money,” 

“You want something, though—my money or my 
vote, and I ain’t got either.”’ 

Ordway laughed shortly. ‘“‘i?-—oh, I just want 
the fun,’’ he answered. 

The beginning was trivial enough, the case sordid, 
and the client only a dull-witted labourer; but to 
Ordway it came as the commencement of the new 
life for which he had prayed—the life which would 
find its centre not in possession, but in surrender, ° 
which would seek as its achievement not personal 
happiness, but the joy of service. 


CHAPTER VI 
Tur Pretty DAUGHTER OF THE MAYOR 


THE pretty girl whom Ordway had seen on the 
gravelled walk was Milly Trend, the only child of the 
Mayor of Tappahannock. People said of Jasper 
Trend that his daughter was the one soft spot in a 
heart that was otherwise as small and hard as a 
silver dollar, and of Milly Trend the same people 
said—well, that she was pretty. Her prettiness 
was invariably the first and the last thing to be 
mentioned about her. Whatever sterner qualities 
she may have possessed were utterly obscured by 
an exterior which made one think of peach blossoms 
and spring sunshine. She had a bunch of curls the 
colour of ripe corn, which she wore tied back from 
her neck with a velvet ribbon; her eyes were the eyes 
of a baby; and her mouth had an adorable little trick 
of closing over her small, though slightly prominent 
teeth. The one flaw in her face was this projection 
of her teeth, and when she looked at herself in 
the glass it was her habit to bite her lips closely 
together until the irregular ivory line was lost. It 
was this fault, perhaps, which kept her prettiness, 
though it was superlative in its own degree, from 
ever rising to the height of beauty. In Milly’s 
opinion it had meant the difference between the 

62 


THE PRETTY DAUGHTER OF THE MAYOR 63 


glory of a world-wide reputation and the lesser honour 
of reigning as the acknowledged belle of Tappa- 
hannock. She remembered that the magnificent 
manager of a theatrical company, a gentleman who 
wore a fur-lined coat and a top hat all day long, had 
almost lost his train while he stopped to look back 
at her on the crowded platform of the station. Her 
heart had beat quickly at the tribute, yet even in 
that dazzling minute she had felt a desperate certainty 
that her single imperfection would decide her future. 
But for her teeth, she was convinced to-day, that he 
might have returned. 

If a woman cannot be a heroine in reality, perhaps 
the next best thing is to look as if she might have 
been one in the age of romance; and this was what. 
Milly Trend’s appearance suggested. to perfection. 
Her manner of dressing, the black velvet ribbon 
on her flaxen curls, her wide white collars open at 
her soft throat, her floating sky-blue sashes and the 
delicate’ peach bloom of her cheeks and lips—all 
these combined to produce a poetic atmosphere about 
an exceedingly poetic little figure. Being plain she 
would probably have made currant jelly for her 
pastor, and have taught sedately in the infant class 
in Sunday school: being pretty she read extravagant 
romances and dreamed strange adventures of fasci- 
nating highwaymen on lonely roads. 

But many a woman who has dreamed of a highway- 
man at eighteen has compromised with a bank clerk 
at twenty-two. Even at Tappahannock—the vecriest 
prose piece of a town—romance might sometimes 


64 THE ANCIENT LAW 


bud and blossom, though it usually brought nothing 
more dangerous than respectability to fruit. Milly 
had read Longfellow and Lucille, and her heroic ideal 
had been taken bodily from one of Bulwer’s novels. 
She had played the graceful part of heroine in a 
hundred imaginary dramas; yet in actual life she had 
been engaged for two years to a sandy-haired, freckled 
face young fellow, who chewed tobacco, and bought 
the dry leaf in lots for a factory in Richmond. From 
romance to reality is a hard distance, and the most 
passionate dreamer is often the patient drudge of 
domestic service. 

And yet even to-day Milly was not without secret 
misgivings as to the wisdom of her choice. She knew 
he was not her hero, but in her short visits to larger 
cities she had met no one who had come nearer 
her ideal lever. To be sure she had seen this ideal, 
in highly coloured glimpses, upon the stage—though 
these gallant gentlemen in trunks had never so much 
as condescended to glance across the foot-lights to 
the little girl in the dark third row of the balcony. 
Then, too, all the ladies upon the stage were beauti- 
ful enough for any hero, and just here she was apt to 
remember dismally the fatal projection of her teeth. 

So, perhaps, after all, Harry Banks was as near 
Olympus as she could hope to approach; and there was 
a mild consolation in the thought that there was prob- 
ably more sentiment in the inner than in the outward 
man. Whatever came of it, she had learned that in 
a prose age it is safer to think only in prose. 

On the morning upon which Ordway had first 


THE PRETTY DAUGHTER OF THE MAYOR 65 


passed her gate, she had left the breakfast table at 
the postman’s call, and had run down the gravelled 
walk to receive a letter from Mr. Banks, who was off 
on a short business trip for his firm. With the letter 
in her hand she had turned to find Ordway’s blue 
eyes fixed in careless admiration upon her figure; and 
for one breathless instant she had felt her insatiable 
dream rise again and clutch at her heart. Some subtle 
distinction in his appearance—an unlikeness to the 
masculine portion of Tappahannock—had caught 
her eye in spite of his common and ill-fitting clothes. 
Though she had, known few men of his class, the 
sensitive perceptions of the girl had made her instantly 
aware of the difference between him and Harry Banks. 
For a moment her extravagant fancy dwelt on his 
figure—on this distinction which she had noticed, 
on his square dark face and the singular effect of his 
bright blue eyes. Then turning back in the yard, she 
went slowly up the gravelled walk, while she read with 
a vague feeling of disappointment the love letter writ- 
ten laboriously by Mr. Banks. It was, doubtless, but 
the average love letter of the average plain young man, 
but to Milly in her rosy world of fiction, it appeared 
suddenly as if there had protruded upon her attention 
one of the great, ugly, wholesome facts of life. What 
was the use, she wondered, in being beautiful if her 
love letters were to be filled with enthusiastic accounts 
of her lover’s prowess in the tobacco market? 

At the breakfast table Jasper Trend was pouring 
maple syrup on the buckwheat cakes he had piled 
on his plate, and at the girl’s entrance he spoke without 


66 THE ANCIENT LAW 


Temoving his gaze from the plated silver pitcher in 
his hand. 

‘“‘Any letters, daughter?’’ he inquired, carefully 
running his knife along the mouth of the pitcher 
to catch the last drop of syrup. 

“‘One,’’ said Milly, as she sat down beside the coffee 
pot and looked at her father with a ripple of annoyance 
in her babyish eyes. 

“T reckon I can guess about that all right,” 
remarked Jasper with his cackling chuckle, which 
was as little related to a sense of humour as was the 
beating of a tin plate. He was a long, scraggy man, 
with drab hair that grew in scallops on his narrow 
forehead and a large nose where the prominent red 
veins turned purple when he became excited. 

“There ’s a stranger in town, father,’’ said Milly 
as she gave him his second cup of coffee. ‘‘I think 
he is boarding at Mrs. Twine’s.”’ 

““A drummer, I reckon—thar ’re a plenty of ’em 
about this season.” 

‘‘No, I don’t believe he is a drummer—he is n’t— 
isn’t quite so sparky looking. But I wish you 
wouldn’t say ‘thar,’ father. You promised me 
you would n’t do it.” 

“Well, it ain’t stood in the way of my getting on,” 
returned Jasper without resentment. Had Milly told 
him to shave his head, he might have protested freely, 
but in the end he would have gone out obediently to 
his barber. Yet people outside said that he ground the 
wages of his workers in the cotton mills down to 
starvation point, and that he had been elected Mayor 


THE PRETTY DAUGHTER OF THE MAYOR 67 


not through popularity, but through terror. It was 
rumoured even that he stood with his wealth behind 
the syndicate of saloons which was giving an ugly 
local character to the town. But whatever his public 
vices may have been, his private life was securely 
hedged about by the paternal virtues. 

“T can’t place him, but I’m sure he isn’t a‘ buyer,’”’ 
repeated Milly, after a moment’s devotion to the 
sugar bowl. 

‘Well, Ill let you knowwhen I see him,’ responded 
Jasper as he left the table and got into his overcoat, 
while Milly jumped up to wrap his neck in a blue 
spotted muffler. 

When he had gone from the house, she took out. 
her lover’s letter again, but it proved, on a second 
trial, even more unsatisfactory than she had found 
it to be at her first reading Asa schoolgirl Milly had 
known every attribute of her divinity from the chiv- 
alry of his soul to the shining gloss upon his boots— 
but to-day there remained to her only the despairing 
conviction that he was unlike Banks. Banks 
appeared to her suddenly in the hard prosaic light 
in which he, on his own account, probably viewed 
his tobacco. Even her trousseau and the lace of 
her wedding gown ceased to afford her the shadow 
of consolation, since she remembered that neither 
of these accessories would occupy in marriage quite 
so prominent a place as Banks. 

The next day Ordway passed at the same hour, 
still on the opposite side of the street. After this she 
began to watch regularly for his figure, looking for 


68 THE ANCIENT LAW 


it when it appeared on Mrs. Twine’s little porch, and 
following it wistfully until it was lost beyond the 
new brick church at the corner. She was not aware 
of cultivating a facile sentiment about the stranger, 
but place a riotous imagination in an empty house and 
it requires little effort to weave a romance from the 
opposite side of the street. Distance, that subtle 
magnifier of attachments, had come to her aid now 
as it had failed her in the person of Harry Banks. 
Even from across the street it was impossible to invest 
Mr. Banks with any quality which might have sug- 
gested an historic background or a mysterious past. 
He was flagrantly, almost outrageously himself; in 
no fictitious circumstances could he have appeared 
as anything except the unvarnished fact that he was. 
No legendary light could have glorified his features 
or improved the set of his trousers—which had taken 
their shape and substance from the legs within. 
With these features and in these trousers, she felt 
that he must usurp the sacred precincts where her 
dream had dwelt. “It would all be so easy if one 
could only be born where one belongs,” she cried out 
hopelessly, in the unconscious utterance of a philos- 
ophy larger than her own. 

And so as the week went by, she allowed her rosy 
fancies to surround the figure that passed three 
times daily along the sidewalk across the way. In 
the morning he walked by with a swinging stride; 
at midday he passed rapidly, absorbed in thought; 
in the evening he came back slowly, sometimes 
stopping to watch the sunset from the brow of the 


THE PRETTY DAUGHTER OF THE MAYOR 6g 


hill. Net since the first morning had he turned his 
blue eyes toward Milly’s gate. 

At the end of the month Mr. Banks returned 
to Tappahannock from a business trip through the 
tobacco districts. He was an ugly, freckled face, 
sandy-haired young fellow—an excellent judge of 
tobacco—with a simple soul that attired itself in large 
checks, usually of a black and white variety. On 
the day of his first visit to Milly he wore a crimson 
necktie pierced by a scarfpin bearing a turtle-dove 
in diamonds. 

““Who’s that fellow over there?’’ he inquired as 
Ordway came up the hill to his dinner. ‘I wonder 
if he’s the chap Hudge was telling me about at 
breakfast?”’ 

‘‘Oh, I don’t know,” answered Milly, in a voice 
that sounded flat in her own ears. ‘‘ Nobody knows 
anything about him, father says. But what was 
Hudge telling you?’ she asked, impelled by adevouring 
yet timid curiosity. 

‘‘Well, if he’s the man I mean, he seems to be a 
kind of revivalist out of a job—or something or other 
queer. Hudge says he broke up a fight last Saturday 
evening in Kelly’s saloon—that’s the place you ’ve 
never heard the name of, I reckon,’’ he added hesita- 
tingly, ‘‘it’s where all the factory hands gather after 
work on Saturday to drink up their week’s wages.”’ 

For once Milly’s interest was stronger than her 
modesty. 

‘‘And did he fight?’’ she demanded in a suspense 
that was almost breathless. 


70 THE ANCIENT LAW 


““He wasn’t there, you know—only passing along 
the street outside, at least that’s what they say— 
when the rumpus broke out. Then he went in 
through the window and——”’ 

““And?”’ repeated Milly, with an entrancing vision 
of heroic blows, for beneath her soft exterior the blood 
of the primitive woman flowed. 

“And preached!”’ finished Banks, with a prodigious 
burst of merriment. 

‘““Preached?”’ gasped Milly, “do you mean a 
sermon?”’ 

‘““Not a regular sermon, but he spoke just like a 
preacher for a solid hour. Before he’d finished the 
men who were drunk were crying like babies and the 
men who weren’t were breaking their necks to sign 
the pledge—at any rate that’s something like the 
tale they tell. There was never such speaking 
(Hudge says he was there) heard before in Tappa- 
hannock, and Kelly is as mad as a hornet because he 
swears the town is going dry.” 

‘“‘And he did n’t strike a single blow?’’ asked Milly, 
with a feeling of disappointment. 

““Why, he had those drunken fools all blubbering 
like kids,” said Banks, ‘‘and then when it was over 
he got hold of Kit Berry (he started the row, you 
know) and carried him all the way home to the little 
cottage in the hollow across the town where Kit 
lives with his mother. Next Sunday if it’s fine 
there ’s going to be an open air meeting in Baxter’s 
field.’’ 

There was a sore little spot in Milly’s heart, a vague 


THE PRETTY DAUGHTER OF THE MAYOR 71 


sentiment of disenchantment. Her house of dreams, 
which she had reared so patiently, stood cold and 
tenantless once more. 

‘“‘Did you ever find out his name?” she asked, with 
a last courageous hope. 

““Smith,’’ replied Banks, with luminous simplicity. 
““The boys have nick-named him ‘Ten Commandment 
Smith.’ ” 

“Ten Commandment Smith?’’ echoed Milly in a 
lifeless voice. Her house of dreams had tottered at 
the blow and fallen from its foundation stone. 


CHAPTER VII 
SHOWS THE GRACES OF ADVERSITY 


ON THE morning after the episode in the barroom 
which Banks had described to Milly, Ordway found 
Baxter awaiting him in a condition which in a 
smaller person would have appeared to be a flutter 
of excitement. 

“So you got mixed up in a barroom row last night, 
I hear, Smith?’’ 

“Well, hardly that,” returned Ordway, smiling 
as he saw the other’s embarrassment break out in 
- drops of perspiration upon his forehead. ‘I was in 
it, I admit, but I can’t exactly say that I was ‘mixed 
tp. 

“You got Kit Berry out, eh?—and took him home.”’ 

“Nothing short of a sober man could have done 
it. He lives on the other side of the town in Bull- 
finch’s Hollow.”’ 

‘‘Oh, I’ve been there,’ said Baxter, ‘I’ve taken 
him home myself.” 

The boyish sparkle had leaped to Ordway’s eyes 
which appeared in the animation of the moment 
to lend an expression of gaiety to his face. As - 
Baxter looked at him he felt something of the 
charm which had touched the drunken crowd in the 
saloon. 

72 


SHOWS THE GRACES OF ADVERSITY 73 


“His mother was at my house before breakfast,” 
he said, in a tone that softened as he went on until 
it sounded as if his whole perspiring person had 
melted into it. ‘‘She was in a great state, poor 
creature, for it seemed that when Kit woke up this 
morning he promised her never to touch another 
drop.” 

“Well, I hope he ’Il keep his word, but I doubt it,” 
responded Ordway. He thought of the bare little 
room he had seen last night, of the patched garments 
drying before the fire, of the scant supper spread upon 
the table, and of the gray-haired, weeping woman 
who had received his burden from him. 

‘He may—for a week,’’ commented Baxter, and 
he added with a big, shaking laugh, “‘they tell me 
you gave ’em a sermon that was as good as a 
preacher’s.”’ 

“‘Nonsense. I got angry and spoke a few words, 
that’s all.” 

“Well, if they were few, they seem to have been 
pretty pointed. I hear Kelly closed his place two 
hours before midnight. Even William Cotton went 
home without falling once, he said.” 

“There was a good reason for that. I happened 
to have some information Cotton wanted.”’ 

“T know,” said Baxter, drawing out the words 
with a lingering emphasis while his eyes searched 
Ordway’s face with a curiosity before which the 
younger man felt himself redden painfully. ‘Cotton 
told me you got him out of a scrape as well as a 
lawyer could have done.’’ 


74 THE ANCIENT LAW 


‘‘T remembered the law and wrote it down for him, 
that’s all.” 

““Have you ever practised law in Virginia?” 

“I’ve never practised anywhere, but I intended 
to when—’”’ he was going to add ‘‘when I finished 
college,” but with a sudden caution, he stopped 
short and then selected his words more carefully, 
‘““when I was a boy. I read a good deal then and 
some of it still sticks in my memory.” 

“IT see,” commented Baxter. His heart swelled 
until he became positively uncomfortable, and he 
coughed loudly in the effort to appear perfectly 
indifferent. What was it about the chap, he ques- 
tioned, that had pulled at him from the start? Was 
it only the peculiar mingling of pathos and gaiety 
in his look? 

“Well, I would n’t set about reforming things too 
much if I were you,” he said at last, ‘‘it ain’t worth 
it, for even when people accept the reforms they are 
pretty likely to reject the reformer. A man’s got to 
have a mighty tough stomach to be able to do good 
immoderately. But all the same,’’ he concluded 
heartily, “you ’re the right stuff and I like you. I 
respect pluck no matter whether it comes out in 
preaching or in blows. I reckon, by the way, if you ’d 
care to turn bookkeeper, you ’d be worth as good as 
a hundred a month to me.”’ 

There was a round coffee stain, freshly spilled at 
breakfast, on his cravat, and Ordway’s eyes were 
fixed upon it with a kind of fascination during the 
whole cf his speech. The very slovenliness of the 


SHOWS THE GRACES OF ADVERSITY 75 


man—the unshaven cheeks, the wilted collar, the 
spotted necktie, the loosely fitting alpaca coat he 
wore, all seemed in some inexplicable way, to empha- 
sise the large benignity of his aspect. Strangely 
enough his tailures as a gentleman appeared to add 
to his impressiveness as a man. One felt that his 
faults were merely virtues swelled to abnormal pro- 
portions—as the carelessness in his dress was but a 
degraded form of the lavish generosity of his heart. 

“To tell the truth, I’d hoped for that all along,” 
said Ordway, withdrawing his gaze with an effort 
from the soiled cravat. ‘‘Do you want me to start 
in at the books to-day?” 

For an instant Baxter hesitated; then he coughed 
and went on as if he found difficulty in selecting the 
words that would convey his meaning. 

“Well, if you don’t mind there’s a delicate little 
matter I ’dlike you to attend to first. Being a stranger 
I thought it would be easier for you than for me— 
have you ever heard anybody speak of Beverly 
Brooke?” 

The interest quickened in Ordway’s face. 

“Why, yes. I came along the road one day with 
a farmer who gave me his whole story—Adam 
Whaley, I heard afterward, was his name.”’ 

Baxter whistled. “‘OQh, I reckon, he hardly told 
you the whole story—for I don’t believe there’s 
anybody living except myself who knows what a 
darn fool Mr. Beverly is. That man has never done 
an honest piece of work in his life; he’s spent every 
red cent of his wife’s money, and his sister’s too, in 


76 THE ANCIENT LAW 


some wild goose kind of speculation—and yet, bless 
my soul, he has the face to strut in here any day 
and lord it over me just as if he were his grand- 
father’s ghost or George Washington. It’s queer 
about those old families, now ain’t it? When they 
begin to peter out it ain’t just an ordinary peter- 
ing, but a sort of mortal rottenness that takes ’em 
root and branch.” 

‘‘And so I am to interview this interesting example 
of degeneration?’’ asked Ordway, smiling. 

““You’ve got to make him understand that he can’t 
ship me any more of his worthless tcbacco,’’ exclaimed 
Baxter in an outburst of indignation. “Do you 
know what he does, sir?—Well, he raises a lazy, 
shiftless, worm-eaten crop of tobacco in an old field— 
plants it too late, tops it too late, cuts it too late, 
cures it too late, and then lets it lie around in some 
leaky smokehouse until it isn’t fit for a hog to chew. 
After he has left it there to rot all winter, he gathers 
the stuff up on the first pleasant day in spring and 
gets an old nigger to cart it to me in an open wagon. 
The next day he lounges in here with his palavering 
ways, and demands the highest price in the market—— 
and I give it to him! That’s the damned outrage 
of it, I give it to him!” concluded Baxter with an 
excitement in which his huge person heaved like a 
shaken mountain. ‘I’ve bought his trash for twenty 
years and ground it into snuff because I was afraid 
to refuse a Brooke—but Brooke or no Brooke there’s 
an end to it now,” he turned and waved his hand 
furiously to a pile of tobacco lying on the warehouse 


SHOWS THE GRACES OF ADVERSITY 77 


floor, ‘‘there’s his trash and it ain’t fit even for 
snuff! ”’ 

He led Ordway back into the building, picked up 
several leaves from the pile, smelt them, and threw 
them down with a contemptuous oath. ‘‘Worm- 
eaten, frost-bitten, mildewed. I want you to go out 
to Cedar Hill and tell the man that his stuff ain’t fit 
for anything but fertiliser,’ he went on. ‘‘If he 
wants it he ’d better come for it and haul it away.”’ 

‘“‘And if he refuses?” 

“He most likely will—then tell him I Il throw it 
into the ditch.” 

“Oh, I’ll tell him,’’ responded Ordway, and he was 
aware of a peculiar excitement in the prospect of © 
an encounter with the redoubtable Mr. Beverly. 
“T’ll do my best,” he added, going through the 
archway, while Baxter followed him with a few 
last words of instruction and advice. The big 
man’s courage had evidently begun to ebb, for as 
Ordway passed into the street, he hurried after him 
to suggest that he should approach the subject 
with as much delicacy as he possessed. ‘I would n’t 
butt at Mr. Beverly, if I were you,’’ he cautioned, 
“just edge around and work in slowly when you get 
the chance.” 

But the advice was wasted upon Ordway, for he 
had started out in an impatience not unmixed with 
anger. Who was this fool of a Brooke? he wondered, 
and what power did he possess that kept Tappa- 
hannock in a state of slavery? He was glad that 
Baxter had sent him on the errand, and the next 


78 THE ANCIENT LAW 


minute he laughed aloud because the big man had 
been too timid to come in person. 

He had reached the top of the hill, and was about 
to turn into the road he had taken his first night in 
Tappahannock, when a woman, wrapped in a shawl, 
hurried across the street from one of the smaller 
houses fronting upon the green. 

‘“‘I beg your pardon, sir, but are you the man that 
helped William Cotton?” 

Clearly William Cotton was bringing him into 
notice. At the thought Ordway looked down upon 
his questioner with a sensation that was almost one of 
pleasure. 

‘““He needed business advice and I gave it, that was 
all,”’ he answered. 

“But you wrote down the whole case for him so that 
he could understand it and speak for himself,” she 
said, catching her breath in a sob, as she pulled her 
thin shawl together. ‘‘ You got him out of his troubles 
and asked nothing, so I hoped you might be willing 
to do as much by me. I am a widow with five 
little children, and though I’ve paid every penny 
I could scrape together for the mortgage, the farm 
is to be sold over our heads and we have nowhere 
to go.” 

Again the glow that was like the glow of pleasure 
illuminated Ordway’s mind. 

‘There ’s not one chance in a hundred that I can 
help you,”’ he said; ‘‘in the case of William Cotton it 
was a mere accident. Still if you will tell me where 
you live, I will come to you this evening and talk 


SHOWS THE GRACES OF ADVERSITY 79 


matters over. If I can help you, I promise you [ 
will with pleasure.’’ 

“‘And for nothing? I am very poor.’ 

He shook his head with a laugh. ‘Oh, I get more 
fun out of it than you could understand!”’ 

After writing down the woman’s name in his note- 
book, he passed into the country road and bent his 
thoughts again upon the approaching visit to Mr. 
Beverly. 

When he reached Cedar Hill, which lay a sombre 
shadow against the young green of the landscape, he 
saw that the dead cedars still lay where they had 
fallen across the avenue. Evidently the family 
temper had assumed an opposite, though equally 
stubborn form, in the person of the girl in the red 
cape, and she had, he surmised, refused to allow 
Beverly to profit by his desecration even to the 
extent of selling the trees he had already cut down. 
Was it from a sentiment, or as a warning, he wondered, 
that she left the great cedars barring the single 
approach to the house? In either case the magnifi- 
cent insolence of her revenge moved him to an 
acknowledgment of her spirit and her justice. 

In the avenue a brood of young turkeys were scratch- 
ing in the fragrant dust shed by the trees; and at his 
appreach they scattered and fled before him. It was 
long evidently since a stranger had penetrated into 
the melancholy twilight of the cedars; for the flutter 
of the turkeys, he discovered presently, was repeated 
in an excited movement he felt rather than saw as 
he ascended the stone steps and knocked at the door. 


80 THE ANCIENT LAW 


The old hound he had seen the first night rose from 
under a bench on the porch, and came up to lick his 
hand; a window somewhere in the right wing shut 
with a loud noise; and through the bare old hall, 
which he could see from the half open door, a breeze 
blew dispersing an odour of hot soapsuds. The hall 
was dim and empty except for a dilapidated sofa in 
one corner, on which a brown and white setter lay 
asleep, and a rusty sword which clanked against the 
wall with a regular, swinging motion. In response 
to his repeated knocks there was a sound of slow steps 
on the staircase, and a handsome, shabbily dressed 
man, holding a box of dominoes, came to the door 
and held out his hand with an apologetic murmur. 

“I beg your pardon, but the wind makes such a 
noise I did not hear your knock. Will you come 
inside or do you prefer to sit on the porch where we 
can get the view?”’ 

As he spoke he edged his way courteously across 
the threshold and with a hospitable wave of his 
hand, sat down upon one of the pine benches 
against the decaying railing. In spite of the shabbi- 
ness of his clothes he presented a singularly attractive, 
even picturesque appearance, from the abundant 
white hair above his forehead to his small, shapely 
feet encased now in an ancient pair of carpet slippers. 
His figure was graceful and well built, his brown eyes 
soft and melancholy, and the dark moustache droop- 
ing over his mouth had been trained evidently into 
an immaculate precision. His moustache, however, 
‘was the one immaculate feature of his person, for 


Pd 


SHOWS THE GRACES OF ADVERSITY 81 


even his carpet slippers were dirty and worn thread- 
bare in places. Yet his beauty, which was obscured 
in the first view by what in a famous portrait might 
have been called ‘‘the tone of time,” produced, after 
a closer and more sympathetic study, an effect which, 
upon Ordway at least, fell little short of the romantic. 
In his youth Beverly had been, probably, one of 
the handsomest men of his time, and this distinction, 
it was easy to conjecture, must have been the occasion, 
if not the cause, of his ruin. Even now, pompous 
and slovenly as he appeared, it was difficult to resist 
a certain mysterious fascination which he still pos- 
sessed. When he left Tappahannock Ordway had felt 
only a humorous contempt for the owner of Cedar 
Hill, but sitting now beside him on the hard pine 
bench, he found himself yielding against his will to 
an impulse of admiration. Was there not a certain 
spiritual kinship in the fact that they were both 
failures in life? 

“You are visiting Tappahannock, then?” asked 
Beverly with his engaging smile; ‘‘I go in seldom or 
I should perhaps have seen you. When a man gets 
as old and as much of an invalid as I am, he usually 
prefers to spend his days by the fireside in the bosom 
of his family.” 

The bloom of health was in his cheeks, yet as he 
spoke he pressed his hand to his chest with the 
habitual gesture of an invalid. ‘‘A chronic trouble 
which has prevented my taking an active part in the 
world’s affairs,’’ he explained, with a sad, yet cheerful 
dignity as of one who could enliven tragedy with a 


82 THE ANCIENT LAW 


comic sparkle. ‘‘I had my ambitions once, sir,” 
he added, ‘“‘but we will not speak of them for they 
’ are over, and at this time of my life I can do little 
more than try to amuse myself with a box of 
dominoes.” 

As he spoke he placed the box on the bench betweén 
them and began patiently matching the little ivory 
blocks. Ordway expressed a casual sympathy, and 
then, forgetting Baxter’s warning, he attempted to 
bring the conversation to a practical level. 

“‘I am employed now at Baxter’s warehouse,” he 
began, ‘‘and the object of my call is to speak with 
you about your last load of tobacco.” 

““Ah!” said Beverly, with warming interest, “it 
is a sufficient recommendation to have come from 
Robert Baxter—for that man has been the best, 
almost the only, friend I have had in life. It is 
impossible to overestimate either his character or 
my admiration. He has come to my assistance, sir, 
when I hardly knew where to turn for help. If you 
are employed by him, you are indeed to be envied.” 

‘I am entirely of your opinion,’’ observed Ordway, 
“but the point this morning " 

‘Well, we ‘ll let that rest a while now,” interrupted 
Beverly, pushing the dominoes away, and turning 
his beautiful, serious face upon his companion. 
‘“When there is an opportunity for me to speak of 
Baxter’s generosity, I feel that I cannot let it escape 
me. Something tells me that you will understand 
and pardon my enthusiasm. There is no boy like 
an old boy, sir.” 





a 


SHOWS THE GRACES OF ADVERSITY 383 


His voice broke, and drawing a ragged hand- 
kerchief from the pocket of his corduroy coat, 
he blew his nose and wiped away two large teardrops 
from his eyes. After such an outburst of sentiment 
it seemed a positive indecency to inform him that 
Baxter had threatened to throw his tcbacco into 
a ditch. 

‘“‘He regrets very much that your crop was a failure 
this year,” said Ordway, after what he felt to be a 
respectable pause. 

‘“‘And yet,”’ returned Beverly, with his irrepressible 
optimism, ‘‘if things had been worse it might even 
have rotted in the ground. As it was,I never saw more 
beautiful seedlings—they were perfect specimens. 
Had not the tobacco worms and the frost and the 
leak in the smckehouse all combined against me, I 
should have raised the most splendid crop in Vir- 
ginia, sir.’’ The spectacle of this imaginary crop 
suffused his face with a glow of ardour. “My 
health permits me to pay little attention to the 
farm,’’ he continued in his eloquent voice, ‘‘I see it 
falling to ruins about me, and I am fortunate in being 
able to enjoy the beauty of its decay. Yes, my crop 
was a failure, I admit,’’ he added, with a touching 
cheerfulness, ‘‘it lay several months too long in the 
barn before I could get it sent to the warehouse—but 
this was my misfortune, not my fault, as I am sure 
Robert Baxter will understand.” 

“He will find it easier to understand the case than 
to sell the tobacco, I fancy.” 

‘“* However that may be, he is aware that I place the 


84 THE ANCIENT LAW 


utmost confidence in his judgment. What he does 
will be the right thing, sir.” 

This confession of artless trust was so overpowering 
that for a moment Ordway hung back, feeling that 
any ground would be dangerous ground upon which 
to proceed. The very absorption in which Beverly 
arranged the dominoes upon the bench added to the 
childlike simplicity of his appearance. Then a 
sudden irritation against the man possessed him, 
for he remembered the girl in the red cape and the 
fallen cedars. From where he sat now they were 
hidden by the curve of the avenue, but the wonderful 
trees, which shed their rich gloom almost upon the 
roof of the house, made him realise afresh the full ex- 
tent of Beverly’s folly. In the fine spring sunshine 
whatever beauties were left in the ruined place showed 
in an intenser and more vernal aspect. Every spear 
of grass on the lawn was tipped with light, and the 
young green leaves on the lilacs stood out as if 
illuminated on a golden background. In one of 
the ivy-covered eaves a wren was building, and 
he could see the flutter of a bluebird in an ancient 
cedar. 

“Tt is a beautiful day,’’ remarked Beverly, pen- 
sively, ‘“‘but the lawn needs trimming.’’ His gaze 
wandered gently over the tangled sheep mint, orchard 
grass and Ailantus shoots which swept from the 
front steps to the fallen fence which had once sur- 
rounded the place, and he added with an outburst 
of animation, ‘‘I must tell Micah to turn in the 
cattle.” 


SHOWS THE GRACES OF ADVERSITY 85 


Remembering the solitary cow he had seen in a 
sheltered corner of the barn, Ordway bit back a 
smile as he rose and held out his hand. 

‘“‘After all, I haven’t delivered my message,’’ he 
said, ‘“which was to the effect that the tobacco is 
practically unfit for use. Baxter told me to request 
you to send for it at your convenience.”’ 

Beverly gathered up his dominoes, and rising with 
no appearance of haste, turned upon him an expres- 
sion of suffering dignity. 

‘‘Such an act upon my part,’ he said, ““would be 
a reflection upon Baxter’s ability as a merchant, and 
after thirty years of friendship I refuse to put an 
affront upon him. I would rather, sir, lose every 
penny my tobacco might bring me.”’ 

His sincerity was so admirable, that for a moment 
it obscured even in Ordway’s mind the illusion 
upon which it rested. When a man is honestly 
ready to sacrifice his fortune in the cause of friend- 
ship, it becomes the part of mere vulgarity to 
suggest to him that his affairs are in a state of 
penury. 

“Then it must be used for fertilisers or thrown 
away,’ said Ordway, shortly. : 

“JT trust myself entirely in Baxter’s hands,’’ re- 
plied Beverly, in sad but noble tones, “whatever he 
does will be the best that could be done under the 
circumstances. You may assure him of this with my 
compliments.”’ 

““Well, I fear, there ’s nothing further to be said,” 
remarked Ordway; and he was about to make his 


86 THE ANCIENT LAW 


final good-bye, when a faded lady, wrapped in a 
Paisley shawl, appeared in the doorway and came 
out upon the porch. 

‘““Amelia,”’ said Beverly, ‘‘allow me to present Mr. 
Smith. Mr. Smith, Mrs. Brooke.”’ 

Mrs. Brooke smiled at him wanly with a pretty, 
thin-lipped mouth and a pair of large rather promi- 
nent eyes, which had once been gray but were now 
washed into a cloudy drab. She was still pretty in 
a hopeless, depressed, ineffectual fashion; and though 
her skirt was frayed about the edges and her shoes 
tun down at the heel, her pale, fawn-coloured hair 
was arranged in elaborate spirals and the hand she 
held out to Ordway was still delicately fine and white. 
She was like a philosopher, who, having sunk into a 
universal pessimism of thought, preserves, in spite 
of himself, a small belief or so in the minor pleasures 
of existence. Out of the general wreck of her 
appearance she had clung desperately to the beau- 
ties of her hair and hands. 

“T had hoped you would stay to dinner,’’ she 
remarked in her listless manner to Ordway. Fate 
had whipped her into submission, but there was that 
in her aspect which never permitted one for an 
instant to forget the whipping. If her husband had 
dominated by his utter incapacity, she had found 
a smaller consolation in feeling that though she had. 
been obliged to drudge she had never learned to do 
it well. To do it badly, indeed, had become at last 
the solitary proof that by right of birth she was 
entitled not to do it at all. 


SHOWS THE GRACES OF ADVERSITY 87 


At Ordway’s embarrassed excuse she made no 
effort to insist, but stood, smiling like a ghost of her 
_ own past prettiness, in the doorway. Behind her 
the bare hall and the dim staircase appeared more 
empty, more gloomy, more forlornly naked than 
they had done before. 

Again Ordway reached for his hat, and prepared 
to pick his way carefully down the sunken steps; 
but this time he was arrested by the sound of smoth- 
ered laughter at the side of the house, which ran 
back to the vegetable garden. A moment later 
the girl in the red cape appeared running at full 
speed across the lawn, pursued by several shriek- 
ing children that followed closely at her skirts. Her 
clear, ringing laugh—the laugh of youth and buoyant 
health—held Ordway motionless for an instant upon 
the porch; then as she came nearer he saw that she 
held an old, earth-covered spade in he> hands and 
that her boots and short woollen skirt were soiled 
with stains from the garden beds. But the smell 
of the warm earth that clung about her seemed only 
to increase the vitality and freshness in her look. 
Her vivid animation, her sparkling glance, struck 
him even more forcibly than they had done in the 
street of Tappahannock. 

At sight of Ordway her laugh was held back 
breathlessly for an instant; then breaking out again, 
it began afresh with redoubled merriment, and sink- 
ing with exhaustion on the lowest step, she let the 
spade fall to the ground while she buried her wind- 
blown head in her hands. 


88 THE ANCIENT LAW 


“I beg your pardon,” she stammered presently, 
lifting her radiant brown eyes, “‘but I’ve run so fast 
that I’m quite out of breath.”” Stopping with an 
effort she sought in vain to extinguish her laughter 
in the curls of the smallest child. 

‘““Emily,”’ said Beverly with dignity, ‘“‘allow me 
to present Mr. Smith.”’ 

The girl looked up from the step; and then, 
rising, smiled brightly upon Ordway over the spade 
which she had picked up from the ground. 

“IT can’t shake hands,’’ she explained, “ because 
I’ve been spading the garden.’’ 

If she recognised him for the tramp who had slept in 
her barn there was no hint of it in her voice or manner. 

‘Do you mean, Emily,’’ asked Beverly, in his 
plaintive voice, ‘‘that you have been actually dig- 
ging in the ground?”’ 

‘“‘Actually,’’ repeated Emily, in a manner which 
made Ordway suspect that the traditional feminine 
softness was not included among her virtues. ‘“‘I 
actually stepped on dirt and saw—worms.”’ 

‘““But where is Micah?”’ 

‘“Micah has an attack of old age. He was eighty- 
two yesterday,”’ 

“Is it possible?’’ remarked Beverly, and the 
discovery appeared to afford him ground for cheer- 
ful meditation. , 

‘No, it isn’t possible, but it’s true,’’ returned the 
girl, with good-humoured merriment. ‘As there are 
only two able-bodied persons on the place, the mare 
and I, it seemed to me that one of us had better take 


SHOWS THE GRACES OF ADVERSITY 89 


a hand at the spade. But I had to leave off after the 
first round,” she added to Ordway, showing him 
her right hand, from the palm of which the skin 
had been rubbed away. She was so much like a 
gallant boy that Ordway felt an impulse to 
take the hand in his own and examine it more 
carefully. 

“Well, I’m very much surprised to hear that Micah 
is so old,’’ commented Beverly, dwelling upon the 
single fact which had riveted his attention. ‘I must 
be making him a little present upon his birthday.” 

The girl’s eyes flashed under her dark lashes, but 
temembering Ordway’s presence, she turned to him 
with a casual remark about the promise of the spring. 
He saw at once that she had achieved an indignant 
detachment from her thriftless family, and the ardent, 
almost impatient energy with which she fell to . 
labour was, in itself, a rebuke to the pleasant indolence 
which had hastened, if it had not brought about, the 
tuin of the house. Was it some temperamental 
disgust for the hereditary idleness which had spurred 
her on to take issue with the worn-out traditions of © 
her ancestors and to place herself among the labouring 
rather than the leisure class? As she stood there in her 
freshness and charm, with the short brown curls 
blown from her forehead, the edge of light shining 
in her eyes and on her lips, and the rich blood kindling 
in her vivid face, it seemed to Ordway, looking back 
at her from the end of his forty years, that he was 
brought face to face with the spirit of the future | 
Tising amid the decaying sentiment of the past. 


CHAPTER VIII 
“Ten COMMANDMENT SMITH” 


WHEN Ordway had disappeared beyond the curve 
in the avenue, Emily went slowly up the steps, her 
spade clanking against the stone as she ascended. 

‘“Did he come about the tobacco, Beverly?’’ she 
asked. 

Beverly rose languidly from the bench, and stood 
rubbing his hand across his forehead with an ex- 
hausted air. 

‘““My head was very painful and he talked so rap-: 
idly I could hardly follow him,’’ he replied; ‘ but is it 
possible, Emily, that you have been digging in the 
garden?”’ 

“There is nobody else to do it,” replied Emily, with 
an impatient flash in her eyes; ‘“‘only half the garden 
has been spaded. If you disapprove so heartily, I 
wish you ’d produce someone to do the work.”’ 

Mrs. Brooke, who had produced nothing in her 
life except nine children, six of whom had died in 
infancy, offered at this a feeble and resigned rebuke. 

“Iam sure you could get Salem,” she replied. 

“We owe him already three months’ wages,” 
returned the girl, ‘‘‘I am still paying him for last 
autumn.” 

“All I ask of you, Emily, is peace,’’ remarked 

90 


“TEN COMMANDMENT SMITH” gr 


Beverly, in a gentle voice, as he prepared to enter 
the house. ‘‘Nothing—no amount of brilliant argu- 
ment can take the place of peace in a family circle. 
My poor head is almost distracted when you raise 
your voice.” 

The three children flocked out of the dining-room 
and came, with a rush, to fling themselves upon him. 
They adored him—and there was a live terrapin 
which they had brought in a box for him to see! In 
an instant his depression vanished, and he went off, 
his beautiful face beaming with animation, while 
the children clung rapturously to his corduroy coat. 

‘“* Amelia,” said Emily, lowering her voice, ‘don’t 
you think it would improve Beverly’s health if he 
were to try working for an hour every day in the 
garden?”’ 

Mrs. Brooke appeared troubied by the suggestion. 
“If he could only make up his mind to it, I’ve no 
doubt it would,” she answered, “he has had no ~ 
exercise since he was obliged to give up his horse. 
Walking he has always felt to be ungentlemanly.”’ 

She spoke in a softly tolerant voice, though she 
herself drudged day and night in her anxious, tearful, 
and perfectly ineffectual manner. For twenty years 
she had toiled patiently without, so far as one could 
perceive, achieving a single definite result—for by 
some unfortunate accident of temperament, she was 
doomed to do badly whatever she undertook to do 
at all. Yet her intention was so admirable that she 
appeared forever apologising in her heart for the in- 
competence of her hands. 


92 THE ANCIENT LAW 


Emily placed the spade in the corner of the porch, 
and desisting from her purpose, went upstairs to 
wash her hands before going in to dinner. As she 
ascended the wide, dimly lighted staircase, upon 
which the sun shone with a greenish light from the 
gallery above, she stopped twice to wonder why 
Beverly’s visitor had slept in the barn like a tramp 
only six weeks ago. Before her mirror, a minute 
later, she put the same question to herself while she 
braided her hair. 

The room was large, cool, high-ceiled, with a great 
brick fireplace, and windows which looked out on the 
garden, where purple and white lilacs were blooming 
beside the gate. On the southern side the ivy had 
grown through the slats of the old green shutters, 
until they were held back, crumbling, against the 
house, and in the space between one of the cedars 
brushed always, with a whispering sound, against the 
discoloured panes. In Emily’s absence a curious 
melancholy descended on the old mahogany furni- 
ture, the greenish windows and the fireless 
hearth; but with the opening of the door and the 
entrance of her vivid youth, there appeared also a 
light and gracious atmosphere in her surroundings. 
She remembered the day upon which she had returned 
after ten years’ absence, and how as she opened the 
closed shutters, the gloom of the place had resisted 
the passage of the sunshine, retreating stubbornly 
from the ceiling to the black old furniture and then 
across the uncarpeted floor to the hall where it still 
held control. For months after her return it had 


“TEN COMMANDMENT SMITH” 93 


seemed to her that the fight was between her spirit 
and the spirit of the past—between hope and melan- ~ 
choly, between growth and decay. The burden of 
debt, of poverty, of hopeless impotence had fallen 
upon her shoulders, and she had struggled under it - 
with impetuous gusts of anger, but with an energy 
that never faltered. To keep the children fed and 
clothed, to work the poor farm as far as she was able, 
to stay clear of any further debts, and to pay off the 
yearly mortgage with her small income, these were the 
things which had filled her thoughts and absorbed 
the gallant fervour of her youth. Her salary at the 
public school had seemed to Beverly, though he disap- 
proved of her position, to represent the possibility of 
luxury; and in some loose, vague way he was never 
able to understand why the same amount could not 
be made to serve in several opposite directions at the 
same time. 

“That fifty dollars will come in very well, indeed, 
my dear,” he would remark, with cheerfulness, 
gloating over the unfamiliar sight of the bank notes, 
“it’s exactly the amount of Wilson’s bill which he’s 
been sending in for the last year, and he refuses to 
furnish any groceries until the account is settled. 
Then there ’s the roof which must be repaired—it will 
help us there—then we must all have a supply of 
shoes, and the wages of the hands are due to-morrow, 
I overlooked that item.” 

“But if you pay it all to Wilson,” Emily would ask, 
as a kind of elementary lesson in arithmetic, ‘how is 
the money going to buy all the other things?”’ 


94 THE ANCIENT LAW. 


*‘Ah, to be sure,’’ Beverly would respond, as if 
struck by the lucidity of the idea, “that is the 
question.” 

And it was likely to remain the question until the 
end of Beverly—for he had grown so accustomed to 
the. weight of poverty upom his: shoulders that. he 
would probably have felt: a sense of loss if it had been 
suddenly removed. But. it was impossible to live 
in. the house with him, to receive his confidences 
and meet his. charming smile and not to entertain 
a sentiment of affection for him in: one’s heart. 
_ His. unfailing courtesy was his defence, though 
even this at times. worked in: Emily an unreasonable 
resentment. He had: ruined his family, and. she 
felt that she could have forgiven him more easily 
if he had. ruined it with a less irreproachable de- 
meanour. 

After her question he had said nothing further 
about the tobacco, but a chance meeting with 
Adam Whaley, as she rode into Tappahannock 
on the Sunday after Ordway’s visit, made clear 
to her exactly what. the purpose of that visit had 
been. 

“It’s a pity Mr. Beverly let his tobacco spoil, 
particular’ arter his wheat turned out. to be no 
account,’’ remarked Adam. ‘I hope you don’t 
mind my sayin’, Miss Em’ly, that Mr. Beverly is 
about as po’ a farmer as he is a first rate gentle- 
man.” 

“‘Oh, no, I don’t mind in the least, Adam,” said 
Emily. ‘Do you know,’’ she asked. presently, 


“TEN COMMANDMENT SMITH” 95. 


“any hands that I can get to work the garden this 
week?”’ 

Whaley shook his head. ‘They get better paid at 
the factories,’ he answered; ‘‘an’ them that ain’t 
got thar little patch to labour in, usually manage to 
git a job in town.” 

Emily was on her old horse—-an animal discarded by 

Mr. Beverly on account of age—and she looked down 
at his hanging neck with a feeling that was almost one 
of hopelessness. Beverly, who had never paid his. 
bilis, had seldom paid his servants; and of the old 
slave generation that would work for its master for a 
song, there were only Micah and poor half-demented 
Aunt Mehitable now left. 
“The trouble with Mr. Beverly,” continued 
Adam, laying his hand on the neck of tne old 
horse, ‘‘is that he was born loose-fingered jest as 
some folks are born loose-moraled. He’s never 
held on to anything sense he came into the world 
an’ I doubt if he ever will. Why, bless yo’ life, 
even as a leetle boy he never could git a good grip 
on his fishin’ line. It was always a-slidin’ an’ 
slippin’ into the water.’ 

They had reached Tappahannock in the midst of 
Adam’s philosophic reflection; and as they were 
about to pass an open field on the edge of 
the town, Emily pointed to a little crowd which 
had gathered in the centre of the grass-grown 
space. 

“Ts it a Sunday frolic, do you. suppose?’’ she 
inquired. 


96 THE ANCIENT LAW 


“That? Oh no—it’s ‘Ten Commandment Smith,’ 
as they call him now. He gives a leetle talk out thar 
every fine Sunday arternoon.”’ 

“A talk? About what?” 

‘‘Wall, I ain’t much of a listener, Miss, when it 
comes to that. My soul is willin’ an’ peart enough, 
but it’s my hands an’ feet that make the trouble. I 
declar’ I’ve only got to set down in a pew for ’em to 
twitch untwel you’d think I had the Saint Vitus 
dance. It don’t look well to be twitchin’ the whole 
time you are in church, so that’s the reason I’m 
obleeged to stay away. As for ‘Ten Commandment 
Smith,’ though, he’s got a voice that’s better than 
the doxology, an’ his words jest boom along like 
cannon.”’ 

‘And do the people like it?” 

‘““Some, of ’em do, I reckon, bein’ as even ser- 
mons have thar followers, but thar ’re t’others that 
go jest out of the sperit to be obleegin’, an’ it seems 
tothem that a man’s got a pretty fair licence to preach 
who gives away about two-thirds of what he gits a 
month. Good Lord, he could drum up a respectable 
sized congregation jest from those whose back mort- 
gages he’s helped pay up.” 

While he spoke Emily had turned her horse’s 
head into the field, and riding slowly toward the 
group, she stopped again upon discovering that it 
was composed entirely of men. Then going a little 
nearer, she drew rein just beyond the outside circle, 
and paused for a moment with her eyes fixed intently 
upon the speaker’s face. 


‘TEN COMMANDMENT SMITH” 97 


In the distance a forest, still young in leaf, lent a 
radiant, springlike background to the field, which 
rose in soft green swells that changed to golden 
as they melted gradually into the landscape. 
Ordway’s head was bare, and she saw now that the 
thick locks upon his forehead were powdered heavily 
with gray. She could not catch his words, but his 
voice reached her beyond the crowd; and she found 
herself presently straining her ears lest she miss the 
sound which seemed to pass with a peculiar richness 
into the atmosphere about the speaker. The religious 
significance of the scene moved her but little—for 
she came of a race that scorned emotional conversions 
or any faith, for that matter, which did not confine 
itself within four well-built walls. Yet, in spite of 
her convictions, something in the voice whose words 
she could not distinguish, held her there, as if she were 
rooted on her old horse to the spot of ground. The 
unconventional preacher, in his cheap clothes, aroused 
in her an interest which seemed in some vague way to 
have its beginning in a mystery that she could not 
solve. The man was neither a professional revivalist 
nor a member of the Salvation Army, yet he appeared 
to hold the attention of his listeners as if either their 
money or their faith was in his words. And it was no 
uncultured oratory—‘‘Ten Commandment Smith,” for 
all his rough clothes, his muddy boots and his 
hardened hands, was teneath all a gentleman, no 
matter what his work—no matter even what his 
class. Though she had lived far out of the world in 
which he had had his place, she felt instinctively that 


98 THE ANCIENT LAW 


the voice she heard had been trained to reach 
another-audience than the one before him in the old. 
field. His words might be simple and straight from 
the heart—doubtless they were—but the voice of the 
preacher—the vibrant, musical, exquisitely mod- 
ulated voice—was not merely a personal gift, but the 
result of generations of culture. The atmosphere of 
a larger world was around him as ‘he stood there, 
bare-headed in the sunshine, speaking to a breathless 
crowd of factory workers as if his heart went out to 
them in the words he uttered. Perfectly motionless 
on the grass at his feet his congregation sat in 
circles with their pathetic dumb eyes fixed on his 
face. 

“What is it about, Adam? Can’t you find out?” 
asked Emily, stirred by an impulsive desire to 
be one of the attentive group of listeners—to come 
under the spell of personality which drew its magic 
circle in the centre of the green field. 

Adam crossed the space slowly, and returned after 
what was to Emily an impatient interval. 

“Tt’s one of his talks on the Ten Commandments— 
that’s why they gave him his nickname. I didn’t 
stay to find out whether ‘twas the top or the 
bottom of ’em, Miss, as I thought you might be 
in a hurry.” 

“But they can get that in church. What makes 
them come out here?”’ 

““Oh, he tells *em things,” said Adam, ‘about 
people and places, and how to get on in life. Then 
he’s al’ays so ready to listen to anybody’s troubles 


“TEN COMMANDMENT SMITH” 99 


arterward; and he’s taken over Martha Frayley’s 
mortgage—you know she’s the widow of Mike 
Frayley who was a fireman and lost his dife last 
January in the fire at Bingham’s Wall—I reckon, 
a man’s got a right to ‘talk big when he lives big, 
too.” 

“Ves, I suppose he has,” said Emily. ‘Well, I 
‘must be going now, so I ll ride on ahead of you.” 

Touching the neck of the horse with her bare 
hand, she passed at a gentle amble into one of the 
smaller streets of Tappahannock. . Her purpose was 
to call upon one of her pupils who had been absent 
from school for several days, but upon reaching the 
house she found that the child, after a slight illness, 
had recovered sufficiently to be out of doors. 
This was a relief rather than a disappointment, and 
mounting again, she started slowly back in the 
direction of Cedar Hill. A crowd of men, walking in 
groups along the roadside, made her aware that the 
gathering in the field had dispersed, and as she rode 
by she glanced curiously among them in the hope of 
discovering the face of the speaker. He was walking 
slightly behind the crowd, listening with an expres- 
sion of interest, to a man in faded blue overalls, 
who kept a timid yet determined hold upon his arm. 
His face, which had appeared grave to Emily when she 
saw it at Cedar Hill, wore now a look which seemed a 
mixture of spiritual passion and boyish amusement. 
He impressed her as both sad and gay, both bitter 
and sympathetic, and she was struck again by the 
contrast between his hard mouth and his gentle 


100 THE ANCIENT LAW 


eyes. As she met his glance, he bowed without a 
smile, while he stepped back into the little wayside 
path among the dusty thistles. 

Unconsciously, she had searched his face as Milly 
Trend had done before her, and like her, she had 
- found there only an impersonal kindliness. 


CHAPTER IX 
Tue OLp AND THE NEw 


WHEN she reached home she found Beverly, 
seated before a light blazein the dining-room, plunged 
in the condition of pious indolence which constituted 
his single observance of the Sabbath. To do nothing 
had always seemed to him in its way as religious as 
to attend church, and so he sat now perfectly motion- 
less, with the box of dominoes reposing beside his 
tobacco pouch on the mantel above his head. The 
room was in great confusion, and the threadbare 
carpet, ripped up in places, was littered with the 
broken bindings of old books and children’s toys 
made of birchwood or corncob, upon which Beverly 
delighted to work during the six secular days of the 
week. At his left hand the table was already laid 
for supper, which consisted of a dish of batter-bread, 
a half bared ham bone and a pot of coffee, from 
which floated a thin and cheap aroma. A wire 
shovel for popping corn stood at one side of the big 
brick fireplace, and on the hearth there was a small 
pile of half shelled red and yellow ears. Between the 
two long windows a tall mahogany clock, one of the 
few pieces left by the collector of old furniture, ticked 
with a loud, monotonous sound, which seemed to 
increase in volume with each passage of the hands. 

ror 


102 THE ANCIENT LAW 


“‘Did- you: hear any news, my dear?” inquired 
Beverly; as Emily entered, for in spite of the fact 
that’ he rarely left his fireside, he was an insatiable 
consumer of small bits of gossip. 

‘I didn’t see anybody,” answered Emily in her — 
cheerful voice. ‘Shall I pour the coffee?”’ 

She went to the head of the table, while her 
brother, after shelling an ear of corn into the’ wire 
shovel, began shaking it slowly over the hickory 
log. 

“T thought you might have heard if Milly Trend 
had really ‘made up her mind to marry that young 
tobacco merchant,” he observed. 

Before Emiiy could reply the door opened and the 
three children rushed in, pursued by Aunt Mehitable, 
who announced that ‘Miss Meely” had gone to bed 
with one of her sick headaches and would not come 
down to supper. The information affcrded Beverly 
some concern, and he rose to leave the room with the 
intention of going upstairs to his wife’s chamber; but 
observing, as he did so, that the corn was popping 
finely, he sat down again and devoted his atten- 
tion to the shovel, which he began to shake more 
rapidly. 

“The terrapin’s sick, papa,’ piped one of the 
children, a little girl called Lila, as she pulled back her 
chair with a grating noise and slipped into her seat. 
““Do you s’pose it would like a little molasses for its 
supper?” : 

‘‘Terrapins don’t eat molasses,” said the boy, whose 
name was Blair. “They eat flies—I ’ve seen ‘em.” 


THE. OLD AND THE NEW 103 


My terrapin shan’t eat flies,’’ protested Bella, 
the second little girl. 

“Tt ain’t your. terrapin!”’ 

© Eicas;’! 

“It ain’t her terrapin, is it, papa?”’ 

Beverly, having finished his task, unfastened the 
lid of the shovel with the poker, and suggested that 
the terrapin might try a little popcorn for a. change. 
As he stood there with his white hair and his flushed 
face in the red firclight, he made a picture of beautiful 
and serene domesticity. 

“TE should n’t wonder if he ’d get quite a taste for 
popcorn if you could once persuade him to try it,”’ 
he remarked, his mind having wandered whimsically 
from his wife to the terrapin. 

Emily had given the children batter-bread and 
buttermilk, and. she sat now regarding her brother’s 
profile as it was limned. boldy in shadow against the 
quivering flames. It was impossible, she discovered, 
to survey Beverly’s character with softness or his 
profile with severity. 

“Don’t you think,” she ventured presently, after 
a wholesome effort to achieve diplomacy, “‘that you 
might try to-morrow to spade the seed rows in the 
garden. Adam can’t find anybody, and if the corn 
isn’t dropped this week we’ll probably. get none 
until late in the summer.” 

**T cannot dig, to beg I am ashamed,’ ’’ quoted 
Beverly, as he drank his coffee. ‘“‘It would lay me 
up for a week, Emily, Iam surprised that you ask it.”’ 

She was surprised herself, the moment after she 


104 THE ANCIENT LAW 


had put the question, so hopeless appeared any 
attempt to bend Beverly to utilitarian purposes. 

‘Well, the tomatoes which I had counted on for 
the market will come too late,’’ she said with a barely 
suppressed impatience in her voice. 

“‘T should n’t worry about it if I were you,’’ returned 
Beverly, ‘“‘there’s nothing that puts wrinkles in a 
pretty face so soon as little worries. I remember 
Uncle Bolingbroke (he used to be my ideal as a little 
boy) told me once that he had lived to be upward 
of ninety on the worries from which he had been saved. 
As a small child I was taken to see him once when 
he had just come to absolute ruin and had been 
obliged to sell his horses and his house and even his 
wife’s jewellery for debt. A red flag was flying at the 
gate, but inside sat Uncle Bolingbroke, drinking 
port wine and cracking nuts with two of his old cronies. 
‘Yes, I’ve lost everything, my boy,’ he cried, ‘but it 
does n’t worry mea bit!’ At that instant I remember 
noticing that his forehead was the smoothest I had 
ever seen.” 

“But his wife had to take in dressmaking,’ com- 
mented Emily, ‘‘and his children grew up without a 
particle of education.” 

‘‘Ah, so they did,” admitted Beverly, with sad- 
ness, ‘‘the details had escapd me.”’ 

As they had escaped him with equal success all 
his life, the fact seemed to Emily hardly deserving 
of comment, and leaving him to his supper, she 
went upstairs to find Mrs. Brooke prostrate, in a 
cold room, with her head swathed in camphor ban- 


THE OLD AND THE NEW 105 


dages. In answer to Emily’s inquiries, she moaned 
plaintively that the pantry shelves needed scouring - 
and that she must get up at daybreak and begin the 
work. ‘‘I’ve just remembered lying here that I 
planned to clean them last week,” she said excitedly, 
‘and will you remind me, Emily, as soon as I get 
up that Beverly’s old brown velveteen coat needs a 
patch at the elbow?” 

“Don’t think of such things now, Amelia, there’s 
plenty of time. You are shivering all over—I ’ll start 
the freinamoment. It has turned quite cool again.’ 

“But I wanted to save the pine knots until Beverly 
came up,” sighed Mrs. Brooke, ‘‘ he is so fond of them.” 

Without replying to her nervous protest, Emily 
knelt on the hearth and kindled a blaze which leaped 
rosily over the knots of resinous pine. Of the two 
family failings with which she was obliged to con- 
tend, she had long ago decided that Beverly’s selfish- 
ness was less harmful in its results than Amelia’s 
self-sacrifice. Inordinate at all times, it waxed 
positively violent during her severe attacks of 
headache, and between two spasms of pain her 
feverish imagination conjured up dozens of small 
self-denials which served to increase her discomfort 
while they conferred no possible benefit upon either 
her husband or her children. Her temperament had 
fitted her for immolation; but the character of the 
age in which she lived had compelled her to embrace 
a domestic rather than a religious martyrdom. The 
rack would have been to her morally a bed of roses, 
and some exalted grace belonging to the high destiny 


106 THE ANCIENT LAW 


that she had missed was visible at times in her 
faded gray eyes and impassive features. 

‘‘Mehitable brought me an egg,’’ she groaned 
presently, growing more comfortable in spite of her 
resolve, as the rosy fire-light penetrated into the chill 
gloom where she lay, ‘but I sent it down to Blair—I 
heard him coughing.”’ 

“He didn’t want it. There was plenty of batter- 
bread.”’ 

“Yes, but the poor boy is fond of eggs and he so 
seldom hasone. It is very sad. Emily, have you 
noticed. how inert.and lifeless Mr. Brooke has grown?”’ 

“It’s nothing new, Amelia, he has always been 
that way. Can’t you sleep now?”’ 

“Oh, but if you could have.seen him when we 
became engaged, Emily—such life! such spirits! I 
remember the first time I dined at your father’s—that 
was before Beverly’s mother died, so, of course, your 
mother wasn’t even thought of in the family. I 
suppose second marriages are quite proper, since the 
Lord permits them, but they always seem to me like 
trying to sing the same hymn over again with equal 
fervour. Well, I was going to say that when your 
father asked me what part of the fowl I preferred 
and I answered ‘dark meat, sir,’ he fairly rapped the 
table in his delight: ‘Oh, Amelia, what a capital wife 
you ‘ll make for Beverly,’ he cried, ‘if you will.only 
continue to prefer dark meat!’ ” 

She stopped breathlessly, lay silent for a moment, 
and then began to moan softly with pain. Emily 
swept the hearth,:and after putting on a fresh log, 


THE OLD AND THE NEW 107 


went: out; closing the door after her. There was 
no light im her room, but she reflected with a kind 
of desperation that there was no Beverly and. no 
Amelia: The weight. of the family had left her 
bruised and helpless, yet she knew that she must go 
downstairs again, remove the supper things, and send 
the three resisting children off to bed. She was quite 
equal to the task she had undertaken, yet. there were 
moments when, because of her youth and her vitality, 
she found it harder to control her temper than to 
accomplish her work. 

At. ten o’clock; whem she had. coaxed the children 
to sleep, and. persuaded Amelia to drink a cup of 
gruel, she came to her room again and began to undress 
slowly by the full moonlight which: streamed through 
the window. Outside, beyond the lilac bushes, she 
could see the tangled garden, with the dried stubble 
of last year’s: corn.protruding from the unspaded 
rows, This: was the last sight upon which. her eyes 
turned before she climbed into the high tester bed 
and fell into the prompt and untroubled sleep. of 
‘ youth. 

Awaking at six o’clock she went again to the 
window, and at the first glance it seemed to her that 
she must have slipped back into some orderly and 
quiet dream—for the corn rows which had presented 
a. blighted aspect under the moonlight were now 
-spaded and harrowed into furrows ready for planting. 
The suggestion that Beverly had prepared a surprise 
for her occurred first to her mind, but she dismissed 
this the next instant and thought of Adam, Micah, 


108 THE ANCIENT LAW 


even of the demented Aunt Mehitable. The memory 
of the fairy godmother in the story book brought a 
laugh to her lips, and as she dressed herself and ran 
downstairs to the garden gate, she half expected to 
see the pumpkin chariot disappearing down the weed- 
grown path and over the fallen fence. The lilac 
blossoms shed a delicious perfume into her face, and 
leaning against the rotting posts of the gate, she 
looked with mingled delight and wonder upon the 
freshly turned earth, which flushed faintly pink in 
the sunshine. A heavy dew lay over the landscape 
and as the sun rose slowly higher the mist was drawn 
back from the green fields like a sheet of gauze that 
is gathered up. 

‘Beverly? Micah? Mehitable?”’ each name was a 
question she put to herself, and after each she 
answered decisively, “‘No, it is impossible.’’ Micah, 
who appeared at the moment, doting, half blind 
and wholly rheumatic, shook his aged head helplessly 
in response to her eager inquiries. There was clearly 
no help to be had from him except the bewildered 
assistance he rendered in the afternoon by following 
on her footsteps with a split basket while she dropped 
the grains of corn into the opened furrows. His help 
in this case even was hardly more than a hindrance, 
for twice in his slow progress he stumbled and fell 
over a trailing brier in the path, and Emily was 
obliged to stop her work and gather up the grain 
which he had scattered. 

““Dese yer ole briers is des a-layin’ out fur you,” 
he muttered as he sat on the ground rubbing the 


THE OLD AND THE NEW 109 


variegated patch on his rheumatic knee. When the 
planting was over he went grumbling back to his 
cabin, while Emily walked slowly up and down the 
garden path and dreamed of the vegetables which 
would ripen for the market. In the midst of her 
business calculations she remembered the little 
congregation in the green field on Sunday afternoon 
and the look of generous enthusiasm in the face 
of the man who passed her in the road. Why had 
she thought of him? she wondered idly, and why 
should that group of listeners gathered out of doors 
in the faint sunshine awake in her a sentiment 
which was associated with some religious emotion 
of which she had been half unconscious? 

The next night she awoke from a profound sleep 
with the same memory in her mind, and turning on 
her pillow, lay wide awake in the moonlight, which 
brought with it a faint spring chill from the dew 
outside. On the ivy the light shone almost like 
dawn, and as she could not fall asleep again, she rose 
presently, and slipping into her flannel dressing- 
gown, crossed to the window and looked out upon 
the shining fields, the garden and the blossoming 
lilacs at the gate. The shadow of the lilacs lay thick 
and black along the garden walk, and her eyes were 
resting upon them, when it seemed to her that a 
portion of the darkness detached itself and melted 
out into the moonlight. At first she perceived only 
the moving shadow; then gradually a figure was 
outlined on the bare rows of the garden, and as her 
eyes grew accustomed to the light, she saw that the 


IIo THE ANCIENT LAW 


figure had assumed a human shape, though it was 
still followed so closely by its semblance upon the 
ground that it was impossible at a distance to distin- 
guish the living worker from his airy double. Yet 
she realised instantly that her mysterious gardener 
was at work before her eyes, and hastening into her 
clothes, she caught up her cape from a chair, and 
started toward the door with an impulsive deter- 
mination to discover his identity. With her hand on 
the knob, she hesitated and stopped, full of perplexity, 
upon the threshold. Since he had wished to remain 
undiscovered was it fair, she questioned, to thrust 
recognition upon his kindness? On the other hand 
was it not more than unfair—was it not positively 
ungrateful—to allow his work to pass without any sign 
of acceptance or appreciation? In the chill white 
moonlight outside she could see the pointed tops of 
the cedars rising like silver spires. As the boughs 
moved the wind entered, bringing mingled odours 
of cedar berries, lilacs and freshly turned soil. For 
an instant longer her hesitation lasted; then throwing 
aside her cape, she undressed quickly, without glanc- 
ing again down into the garden. When. she fell 
asleep now it was to dream of the shadowy gardener 
spading in the moonlight among the lilacs. 


CHAPTER X > 
His NErGHBOUR’s GARDEN 


In wis nightly work in the Brookes’ garden, Ordway 
was prompted at first by a mere boyish impulse to 
repay people whose bread he had eaten and in whose 
straw he had slept. But at the end of the first hour’s. 
labour the beauty of the moonlight wrought its spell 
upon him, and he felt that the fragrance of the lilacs 
went like strong wine to his head. So the next. 
night he borrowed Mrs. Twine’s spade again and 
went back for the pure pleasure of the exercise; © 
and the end of the week found him still digging among 
the last year’s plants in the loamy beds. By spading 
less than two hours a night, he had turned the soil of 
half the garden before Sunday put a stop to his work. 

On his last visit, he paused at the full of the moon, 
and stood looking almost with sadness at the blos- 
soming lilacs and the overgrown path powdered with 
wild flowers which had strayed in through the broken 
fence. For the hours he had spent there the place 
had given him back his freedom and his strength and 
even a reminiscent sentiment of his youth. While 
he worked Lydia had been only a little farther off in 
the beauty of the moonlight, and he had felt her 
presence with a spiritual sense which was keener 
than the sense of touch. 3 

Be oe 


112 THE ANCIENT LAW 


As he drew his spade for the last time from the 
earth, he straightened himself, and standing erect, 
faced the cool wind which tossed the hair back from 
his heated forehead. At the moment he was con- 
tent with the moonlight and the lilacs and the wind 
that blew over the spring fields, and it seemed easy 
enough to let the future rest with the past in the 
hands of God. Swinging the spade at his side, he 
lowered his eyes and moved a step toward the open 
gate. Then he stopped short, for he saw that Emily 
Brooke was standing there between the old posts 
under the purple and white lilacs. 

“It seemed too ungrateful to accept such a service 
and not even to say ‘thank you,’’’ she remarked 
gravely. There was a drowsy sound in her voice; 
her lids hung heavily like a child’s over her brown 
eyes, and her hair was flattened into little curls on 
one side by the pressure of the pillow. 

“It has been a pleasure to me,’’ he answered, ‘‘so 
I deserve no thanks for doing the thing that I 
enjoyed.”’ | 

Drawing nearer he stood before her with the spade 
on his shoulder and his head uncovered. The smell 
of the earth hung about him, and even in the moon- 
light she could see that his blue eyes looked almost 
gay. She felt all at once that he was younger, larger, 
more masculine than she had at first believed. 

‘“‘And yet it is work,”’ she said in her voice of cheer- 
ful authority, ‘“‘and sorely needed work at that. 
I can thank you even though I cannot understand 
why you have done it.” 


HIS NEIGHBOUR’S GARDEN 113 


‘“Let’s put it down to my passion to improve - 
things,’ he responded with a whimsical gravity, 
“don’t you think the garden as I first saw it justified 
that explanation of my behaviour?” 

“The explanation, yes—but not you,’’ she 
answered, smiling. 

“Then let my work justify itself. I’ve made a 
neat job of it, haven’t [?”’ 

“It’s more than neat, it’s positively ornamental,” 
she replied, ‘‘but even your success does n’t explain 
your motive.” 

“Well, the truth is—if you will have it—I needed 
exercise.” 

“You might have walked.” 

“That doesn’t reach the shoulders—there’s the 
trouble.”’ 

She laughed with an easy friendliness which 
struck him as belonging to her gallant manner. 

“Oh, I assure you I shan’t insist upon a reason, 
I’m too much obliged to you,” she returned, coming 
inside the gate. ‘‘Indeed, I’m too good a farmer, 
I believe, to insist upon a reason anyway. Provi- 
dence disposes and I accept with thanks. I may 
wish, though, that the coloured population shared 
your leaning toward the spade. By the way, I see 
it isn’t mine. It looks too shiny.” 

“TI borrowed it from Mrs. Twine, and it is my 
suspicion that she scrubs it every night.” 

“In that case I wonder that she lets it go out to 
other people’s gardens.” 

“She doesn’t usually,’ he laughed as he spoke, 


114 THE ANCIENT LAW 


*“‘but you see I am a very useful person to Mrs. 
Twine. She talks at her husband by way of me.” 

“Oh, I see,’ said Emily. “Well, L’m much 
obliged to her.”’ 

“You need n’t be. She hadn’t the remotest idea 
where it went.” 

Her merriment, joining with his, brought them sud- 
denly together in a feeling of good fellowship. 

‘“‘So you don’t like divided thanks,’’ she commented 
gaily. 

‘Not when they are undeserved,” he answered, 
‘as they are in this case.’’ 

For a moment she was silent; then going slowly 
back to the gate, she turned there and looked at him 
wonderingly, he thought. 

‘‘ After all, it must have been a good wind that blew 
you to Tappahannock,”’ she observed. 

Her friendliness—which impressed him as that of 
a creature who had met no rebuffs or disappointments 
from human nature, made an impetuous, almost 
childlike, appeal to his confidence. 

‘‘Do you remember the night I slept in your barn?” 
he asked suddenly. 

She bent down to pick up a broken spray of lilac. 

‘“Yes, I remember.”’ 

‘Well, I was at the parting of the ways that night 
—I was beaten down, desperate, hopeless. Some- 
thing in your kindness and—yes, and 1n your courage, 
too, put new life into me, and the next morning I 
turned back to Tappahannock. But for you I should 
still have followed the road.”’ 


HIS NEIGHBOUR’S GARDEN IIS 


“‘It is more likely to have been the cup of coffee,” 
she said in her frank, almost boyish way. 

“There ’s something in that, of course.’’ he 
answered quietly. “I was hungry, God knows, but I 
was more than hungry, I was hurt. It was all my 
fault, you understand—I had made an awful mess 
of things, and I had to begin again low down—at 
the very bottom.” It was in his mind to tell her 
the truth then, from the moment of his fall to the 
day that he had returned to Tappahannock; but he 
was schooling himself hard to resist the sudden 
impulses which had wrecked his life, so checking his 
words with an effort, he lowered the spade from his 
shoulder, and leaning neers the handle, stood waiting 
for her to speak. 

“Then you began again at Baxter’s warehouse the 
merning afterward?”’ she asked. 

“I had gone wrong from the very base of things, 
you see,” he answered. 

“And you are making a new foundation now?” 

“Tam trying to. They ’re decent enough folk in 
Tappahannock, aren’t they?’ he added cheerfully. 

‘‘ Perhaps they are,’’she responded, a little wistfully, 
“but I should like to have a glimpse of the world out- 
side. I should like most, I think, to see New York.”’ 

“New York?” he repeated blankly, ‘you ’ve never 
been there?”’ 

“I? Oh, no, I’ve never been out of Virginia, except 
when I taught school once in Georgia.’ 

The simple dignity with which she spoke caused 
him to look at her suddenly as if he had taken her in 


116 | THE ANCIENT LAW 


for the first time. Perfectly unabashed by her dis- 
closure, she stood before him as calmly as she would 
have stood, he felt, had he possessed a thousand 
amazed pairs of eyes. Her confidence belonged 
less to personal experience, he understood now, 
than to some inherited ideal of manner—of social 
values; and it seemed to him at the moment that 
there was a breadth, a richness in her aspect which 
was like the atmosphere of rare old libraries. 

‘“You have, I dare say, read a great many books,” 
he remarked. 

‘‘A great many—oh, yes, we kept our books almost 
+o the last. We still have the entire south wall in 
the library—the English classics are there.”’ 

“‘I imagined so,’’ he answered, and as he looked 
at her he realised that the world she lived in was not 
the narrow, provincial world of Tappahannock, with 
its dusty warehouses, its tobacco scented streets, 
its red clay roads. 

She had turned from the gate, but before moving 
away she looked back and bowed to him with her 
gracious Southern courtesy, as she had done that first 
night in the barn. 

“‘Good-night. I cannot thank you enough,” she 
said. 

“‘Good-night. I am only paying my debt,’ he 
answered. 

As he spoke she entered the house, and with the 
spade on his shoulder he passed down the avenue 
and struck out vigorously upon the road to Tappa- 
hannock, 


HIS NEIGHBOUR’S GARDEN 117 


When he came down to breakfast some hours later, 
Mrs. Twine informed him that a small boy had come 
at daybreak with a message to him from Bullfinch’s 
Hollow. 

‘“‘Of course it ain’t any of my business, suh,’’ she 
continued impressively, ‘‘but if I were you I would n’t 
pay any attention to Kit Berry or his messages. 
Viciousness is jest as ketchin’ as disease, that ’s what 
I say, an’ you can’t go steppin’ aroun’ careless whar 
it is in the air an’ expect to git away with a whole 
morality. °*T ain’t as if you were a female, either, for 
if I do say it who should not, they don’t seem to be so 
thin-skinned whar temptation is concerned. °T was 
only two weeks ago last Saturday when I went to 
drag Bill away from that thar low lived saloon 
(the very same you broke into through the window, 
suh) that Timmas Kelly had the imperence to say 
to me, ‘This is no place for respectable women, Mrs. 
Twine.’ ‘An, indeed, I’d like to know, Mr. Kelly,’ 
said I to him, ‘if it’s too great a strain for the women, 
how the virtue of the men have stood it? For what 
a woman can’t resist, I reckon, it’s jest as well fora 
man not to be tempted with.’ He shet up then tight 
as a keg—I ’d wish you ’d have seen him.” 

“In his place I should probably have done the 
same,’’ admitted Ordway, as he took his coffee from 
her hands. He was upon excellent terms with Mrs. 
Twine, with the children, and even with the disrepu- 
table Bill. 

“Wall, I ’ve done a lot 0’ promisin’, like other folks,” 
pursued Mrs. Twine, turning from the table to pick 


118 THE ANCIENT LAW 


up a pair of Canty’s little breeches into which she 
was busily inserting a patch, ‘‘an’ like them, I reckon, 
I was mostly lyin’ when I didit. Thar’s a good deal 
said at the weddin’ about ‘love’ and ‘ honour’ and 
‘obey,’ but for all the slick talk of the parson, expe- 
rience has taught me that sich things are feelin’s an’ 
not whalebones. Now if thar’s a woman on this 
earth that could manage to love, honour and obey 
Bill Twine, I’d jest like for her to step right up an’ 
show her face, for she’s a bigger fool than I’d have 
thought even a female could boast of bein’. As 
for me, suh, a man’s a man same as a horse is a horse, 
an’ if I’m goin’ to set about honourin’ any animal 
on o’count of its size I reckon I’d as soon turn roun’ 
an’ honour a whale.” 

“But you must n’t judge us all by our friend Bill,” 
remarked Ordway, picking up the youngest child 
with a laugh, ‘remember his weakness, and be 
charitable to the rest of us.”’ 

Mrs. Twine spread the pair of little breeches upon 
her knee and slapped them into shape as energetically 
as if they had contained the person of their infant 
wearer. , 

“As for that, suh,” she rejoined, ‘“‘so far as I can 
see one man differs from another only in the set of 
his breeches—for the best an’ the worst of ’em are 
made of the same stuff, an’ underneath thar skin 
they’re all pure natur. I’ve had three of ’em for 
better or for worse, an’ I reckon that’s as many 
specimens as you generally jedge things by in a 
museum. A weak woman would have kept a widow 


HIS NEIGHBOUR’S GARDEN 11g 


after my marriage with Bob Cotton, the brother of 
William, suh—but I ain’t weak, that’s one thing 
can be said for me—so when I saw my opportunity 
in the person of Mike Frazier, J up an’ said: ‘Wall, 
thar ’s this much to be said for marriage—whether 
you do or whether you don’t you ’ll be sure to regret 
it, an’ the regret for things you have done ain’t quite 
so forlorn an’ impty headed a feelin’ as the regret for 
things you haven’t.’ Then I married him, an’ when 
he died an’ Bill came along I married him, too. Sech 
is my determination when I’ve once made up my 
mind, that if Bill died I’d most likely begin to look 
out for another. But if I do, suh, I tell you now 
that I’d try to start the next with a little pure 
despisin’—for thar ’s got to come a change in marriage 
one way or another, that’s natur, an’ I reckon it’s 
as well to have it change for the better instead of the 
worst.” 

A knock at the door interrupted her, and when 
she had answered it, she looked back over her shoulder 
to tell Ordway that Mr. Banks had stopped by to 
walk downtown with him. 

With a whispered promise to return with a pocket- 
full of lemon drops, Ordway slipped the child from 
his knee, and hurriedly picking up his hat, went out to 
join Banks upon the front steps. Since the day upon 
which the two men had met at a tobacco auction 
Banks had attached himself to Ordway with a devo- 
tion not unlike that of a faithful dog. At his first 
meeting he had confided to the older man the story 
of his youthful struggles, and the following day he 


120 THE ANCIENT LAW 


had unburdened himself with rapture of his passion 
for Milly. 

“T’ve just had breakfast with the Trends,” he 
said, ‘‘so I thought I might as well join you on your 
way down. Mighty little doing in tobacco now, 
is n’t there?”’ 

“Well, I’m pretty busy with the accounts,” 
responded Ordway. ‘By the way, Banks, I’ve had 
a message from Bullfinch’s Hollow. Kit Berry 
wants me to come over.” 

“‘T like his brass. Why can’t he come to you? 

‘‘He’s sick it seems, so I thought I’d go down 
there some time in the afternoon.” 

They had reached Trend’s gate as he spoke, to 
find Milly herself standing there in her highest colour 
and her brightest ribbon. As Banks came up with 
her, he introduced Ordway, who would have passed 
on had not Milly held out her hand. 

“Father was just saying how much he should like 
to meet you, Mr. Smith,” she remarked, hoping while 
_ she uttered the words that she would remember to 
instruct Jasper Trend to live up to them when the 
opportunity afforded. “Perhaps you will come 
in to supper with us to-night? Mr. Banks will be 
here.”’ 

“Thank you,’ said Ordway with the boyish smile 
which had softened the heart of Mrs. Twine, ‘‘but I 
was just telling Banks I had to go over to Bullfinch’s 
Hollow late in the afternoon.” 

“Somebody’s sick there, you know,’’ explained 
Banks in reply to Milly’s look of bewilderment. 


” 


HIS NEIGHBOUR’S GARDEN 121 


“He’s the greatest fellow alive for missionarying to 
sick people.”’ 

“‘Oh, you see it’s easier to hit a man when he’s 
down,’’ commented Ordway, drily. He was looking 
earnestly at Milly Trend, who grew prettier and pinker 
beneath his gaze, yet at the moment he was only 
wondering if Alice’s bright blue eyes could be as lovely 
as the softer ones of the girl before him. 

As they went down the hill a moment afterward 
Banks asked his companion, a little reproachfully, 
why he had refused the invitation to supper. 

“After all I’ve told you about Milly,” he con- 
cluded, ‘“‘I hoped you ’d want to meet her when you 
got the chance.” 

Ordway glanced down ait his clothes. ‘‘My dear 
Banks, I’m a working man, and to tell the truth I 
could n’t manufacture an appearance—that ’s the best 
excuse I have.” 

‘‘All the same I wish you’d go. Milly would n’t 
care.” 

“Milly might n’t, but you would have blushed for 
me. I couldn’t have supported a comparison with 
your turtle-dove.”’ 

Banks reddened hotly, while he put his hand to his 
cravat with a conscious laugh. 

“Oh, you don’t need turtle-doves and things,’ 
he answered, ‘‘there’s something about you—TI don’t 
know what it is—that takes the place of them.” 

“The place of diamond turtle-doves and violet 
stockings?” laughed Ordway with good-humoured 
raillery. 


122 THE ANCIENT LAW 


“You would n’t be a bit better looking if you wore 
them—Milly says so.” 

“IT ’m much obliged to Milly and on the whole I’m 
inclined to think she’s right. Do you know,” he 
added, ‘I’m not quite sure that you are improved by 
them yourself, except for the innocent enjoyment 
they afford you.” 

‘‘But I’m such‘a common looking chap,’’said Banks, 
‘“‘T need an air.”’ 

‘““My dear fellow,’’ returned Ordway, while his 
look went like sunshine to the other’s heart, “‘if you 
want to know what you are—well, you ’re a down- 
right trump!” 

He stopped before the brick archway of Baxter’s 
warehouse, and an instant later, Banks, looking 
after him as he turned away, vowed in the luminous 
simplicity of his soul that if the chance ever came 
to him he “‘would go to hell and back again for the 
sake of Smith.” 


CHAPTER XI 
BuLLFINCH’s HoLLow 


AT FIvE o'clock Ordway followed the uneven 
board walk to the end of the main street, and then 
turning into a little footpath which skirted the 
railroad track, he came presently to the abandoned 
field known in Tappahannock as Bullfinch’s Hollow. 
Beyond a disorderly row of negro hovels, he found 
a small frame cottage, which he recognised as the 
house to which he had brought Kit Berry on the 
night when he had dragged him bodily from Kelly’s 
saloon. In response to his knock the door was 
opened by the same weeping woman—a small withered 
person, with snapping black eyes and sparse gray 
hair brushed fiercely against her scalp, where it clung 
so closely that it outlined the bones beneath. At 
sight of Ordway a smile curved her sunken mouth; 
and she led the way through the kitchen to the 
door of a dimly lighted room at the back, where a 
boy of eighteen years tossed deliriously on a pallet in 
one corner. It was poverty in its direst, its most 
abject, results, Ordway saw at once as his eyes trav- 
elled around the smoke stained, unplastered walls 
and rested upon the few sticks of furniture and the 
scant remains of a meal on the kitchen table. Then 
he looked into Mrs. Berry’s face and.saw that she 

123 


124 THE ANCIENT LAW 


must have lived once amid surroundings far less 
wretched than these. 

“Kit was taken bad with fever three days ago,” 
she said, ‘‘an’ the doctor told me this mornin’ that 
the po’ boy ’s in for a long spell of typhoid. He’s 
clean out of his head most of the time, but when- 
ever he comes to himself he begs and prays me to 
send for you. Something’s on his mind, but I can’t 
make out what it is.”’ 

‘““May I see him now?” asked Ordway. 

“T think he’s wanderin’, but I'll find out in a 
minute.” 

She went to the pallet and bending over the young 
man, whispered a few words in his ear, while her 
knotted hand stroked back the hair from his forehead. 
As Ordway’s eyes rested on her thin shoulders under 
the ragged, half soiled calico dress she wore, he forgot 
the son in the presence of the older and more poignant 
tragedy of the mother’s life. Yet all that he knew 
of her history was that she had married a drunkard 
and had brought a second drunkard into the world. 

‘‘He wants to speak to you, sir—he’s come to,’’ 
she said, returning to the doorway, and fixing her 
small black eyes upon Ordway’s face. ‘‘You 
are the gentleman, ain’t you, who got him to sign 
the pledge?”’ 

Ordway nodded. “Did he keep it?” 

Her sharp eyes filled with tears. 

‘He has n’t touched a drop for going on six weeks, 
sir, but he had n’t the strength to hold up without it, 
so the fever came on and wore him down.”’ Swallow- 


BULLFINCH’S HOLLOW ee 


ing a sob with a gulp, she wiped her eyes fiercely on 
the back of her hand. ‘He ain’t much to look at 
now,” she finished, divided between her present grief 
and her reminiscent pride, “‘but, oh, Mr. Smith, if 
you could have seen him as a baby! When he was a 
week old he was far and away the prettiest thing 
you ever laid your eyes on—not red, sir, like other 
children, but white as milk, with dimples at his knees 
andelbows. I ’vestill got some of his little things—a 
dress he wore and a pair of knitted shoes—and it’s 
them that make me cry, sir. I ain’t grievin’ for the 
po’ boy in there that’s drunk himself to death, but 
for that baby that used to be.’’ 

Still crying softly, she slunk out into the kitchen, 
while Ordway, crossing to the bed, stood looking down 
upon the dissipated features of the boy who lay there, 
with his matted hair tossed over his flushed forehead. 

“I’m sorry to see you down, Kit. Can I do any- 
thing to help you?” he asked. 

Kit opened his eyes with a start of recognition, 
and reaching out, gripped Ordway’s wrist with his 
burning hand, while he threw off the ragged patch- 
work quilt upon the bed. 

“T’ve something on my mind, and I want to get 
it off,’ he answered. ‘‘When it’s once off Ill be 
better and get back my wits.”’ 

“Then get it off. I’m waiting.” 

‘“Do you remember the night in the bar-room?” 
demanded the boy in a whisper, ‘“‘the time you came 
in through the window and took me home?” 

““Go on,’”’ said Ordway. 


126 THE ANCIENT LAW 


“Well, I’d walked up the street behind you that 
afternoon when you left Baxter’s, and I got drunk 
that night on a dollar I stole from you.” 

“But I didn’t speak to you. I didn’t even see you.” 

“Of course you didn’t. If you had I couldn’t 
have stolen it, but Baxter had just paid you and when 
you put your hand into your pocket to get out some- 
thing, a dollar bill dropped on the walk.”’ 

“(zo on.”’ 

‘I picked it up and got drunk on it, there’s nothing 
else. It was a pretty hard drunk, but before I got 
through you came in and dragged me home. Twenty 
cents were left in my pockets. Mother found the 
money and bought a fish for breakfast. 

‘“‘Well, I did that much good at least,’’ observed 
Ordway with a smile, “‘have you finished, Kit?” 

“It’s been on my mind,” repeated Kit deliriously, 
‘“‘and I wanted to get it off.”’ 

“It’s off now, my boy,”’ said Ordway, picking up 
the ragged quilt from the floor and laying it across 
the other’s feet, ‘‘and on the whole I’m glad you told 
me. You’ve done the straight thing, Kit, and Iam 
proud of you.” 

‘Proud of me?” eepeatee Kit, and feil to crying 
like a baby. 

In a minute he grew delirious again, and Ordway, 
after bathing the boy’s face and hands from a basin 
of water on a chair at the bedside, went into the 
kitchen in search of Mrs. Berry, whom he found 
weeping over a pair of baby’s knitted shoes. The 
pathos of her grief bordered so closely upon the 


BULLFINCH’S HOLLOW 127 


ridiculous that while he watched her he forced back 
the laugh upon his lips. 

‘Kit is worse again,’ he said. ‘‘Do you give him 
any medicine?” 

Mrs. Berry struggled with difficulty to her feet, 
while her sobs changed into a low whimpering sound. 

“Did you sit up with him last night?’’ asked Ora- 
way, following her to the door. 

“T’ve been up for three nights, sir. He has to 
have his face and hands bathed every hour.”’ 

“What about medicine and food?” 

“The doctor gives him his medicine free, every 
drop of it, an’ they let me have a can of milk every 
day from Cedar Hill. I used to live there as a girl, 
you know, my father was overseer in old Mr. Brooke’s 
time—before he married Miss Emily’s mother " 

Ordway cut short her reminiscences. 

“Well, you must sleep to-night,” he said author- 
itatively, “‘I’ll come back in an hour and sit up with 
Kit. Where is your room?”’ 

She pointed to a rickety flight of stairs which led 
to the attic above. 

“Kit slept up there until he was taken ill,’’ she 
answered. ‘‘He’s been a hard son to me, sir, as his 
father was a hard husband because of drink, but to 
save the life of me I can’t forgit how good he used to 
be when he warn’t more ’n a week old. Never fretted 
or got into tempers like other babies . 

Again Ordway broke in drily upon her wandering 
recollections. 

“Now I'll go for an hour,” he said abruptly, ‘‘and 








128 THE ANCIENT LAW 


by the way, have you had supper or shall I bring you 
some groceries when I come?” 

“There was a little milk left in the pitcher and I 
had a piece of cornbread, but—oh, Mr. Smith,”’ her 
small black eyes snapped fiercely into his, “‘there are 
times when my mouth waters for a cup of coffee jest 
as po’ Kit’s does for whiskey.” 

“Then put the kettle on,’ returned Ordway, 
smiling, as he left the room. 

It was past sunset when he returned, and he found 
Kit sleeping quietly under the effect of the medicine 
the doctor had just given him. Mrs. Berry had 
recovered sufficient spirit, not only to put the kettle 
on the stove, but to draw the kitchen table into the 
square of faint light which entered over the doorstep. 
The preparations for her supper had been made, he 
saw, with evident eagerness, and as he placed his 
packages upon the table, she fell upon them with 
an excited, childish curiosity. A few moments later 
the aroma of boiling coffee floated past him where 
he sat on the doorstep smoking his last pipe before 
going into the sick-room for the night. Turning 
presently he watched the old woman in amazement 
while she sat smacking her thin lips and jerking her 
shrivelled little hands over her fried bacon; and as 
he looked into her ecstatic face, he realised something 
of the intensity which enters into the scant enjoy- 
ments of the poor. The memory of his night in the 
Brookes’ barn returned to him with the aroma of 
the coffee, and he understood for the first time 
that it is possible to associate a rapture with meat 


BULLFINCH’S HOLLOW 129 


and drink. Then, in spite of his resolve to keep 
his face turned toward his future, he found himself 
contrasting the squalid shanty at his back with the 
luxurious surroundings amid which he had last 
watched all night by a sick-bed. He could see the 
rich amber-coloured curtains, the bowls of violets. 
on the inlaid table between the open windows, the 
exquisite embroidered coverlet upon the bed, and the 
long pale braid of Lydia’s hair lying across the lace 
tuffles upon her nightgown. Before his eyes was the 
sunken field filled with Negro hovels and refuse 
heaps in which lean dogs prowled snarling in search 
of bones; but his inward vision dwelt, in a luminous 
mist, on the bright room, scented with violets, where 
Lydia had slept with her baby cradled within her 
arm. He could see her arm still under the falling 
lace, round and lovely, with. delicate blue veins 
showing beneath the inside curve. 

In the midst of his radiant memory the acrid voice 
of Mrs. Berry broke with a shock, and turning quickly 
he found that his dream took instant flight before the 
ageressive actuality which she presented. 

“T declare I believe I’d clean forgot how good 
things tasted,’’ she remarked in the cheerful tones of 
one who is full again after having been empty. 

Picking up a chip from the ground, Ordway began 
scraping carelessly at the red clay on his boots. 
“It smells rather nice anyway,” he rejoined gcod- 
humouredly, and rising from the doorstep, he crossed 
the kitchen and sat down in the sagging split-bottomed 
chair beside the pallet. 


130 THE ANCIENT LAW 


At sunrise he left Kit, sleeping peacefully after a 
delirious night, and going out of doors for a breath of 
fresh air, stood looking wearily on the dismal prospect 
of Bullfinch’s Hollow. The disorderly road, the 
dried herbage of the field, the Negro hovels, with pig 
pens for backyards, and the refuse heaps piled with 
tin cans, old rags and vegetable rinds, appeared to 
him now to possess a sordid horror which had escaped 
him under the merciful obscurity of the twilight. 
Even the sun, he thought, looked lean and shrunken, 
as it rose over the slovenly landscape. 

With the first long breath he drew there was only 
dejection in his mental outlook; then he remembered 
the enraptured face of Mrs. Berry as she poured out 
her coffee, and he told himself that there were pleas- 
ures hardy enough to thrive and expand even in the 
atmosphere of Bullfinch’s Hollow. 

As there was no wood in the kitchen, he shouldered 
an old axe which he found ieaning in one corner, 
and going to a wood-pile beyond the doorstep, split 
up the single rotting log lying upon a heap of mould. 
Returning with his armful of wood, he knelt on the 
hearth and attempted to kindle a blaze before the 
old woman should make her appearance from the 
attic. The sticks had just caught fire, when a shadow 
falling over him from the open door caused him to 
start suddenly to his feet. 

“TI beg your pardon,” said a voice, “but I’ve 
brought some milk for Mrs. Berry.” 

At the words his face reddened as if from shame, 
and drawing himself to his full height, he stood, 


BULLFINCH’S HOLLOW I3I 


embarrassed and silent, in the centre of the room, 
while Emily Brooke crossed the floor and placed the 
can of milk she had brought upon the table. 

‘“‘T did n’t mean to interrupt you,” she added cheer- 
fully, ‘“but there was no one else to come, so I had to. 
ride over before breakfast. Is Kit better?”’ 

““Yes,”’ said Ordway, and to his annoyance he felt 
himself flush painfully at the sound of his own voice. 

“You spent last night with him?” she inquired in 
her energetic tones. 

m Yes,” 

As he stood there in his cheap clothes, with his. 
dishevelled hair and his unwashed hands, she was 
struck by some distinction of personality, before 
which these surface roughnesses appeared as mere 
incidental things. Wasitin his spare, weather-beaten 
face? Or was it in the peculiar contrast between. 
his gray hair and his young blue eyes? Then her gaze 
fell on his badly made working clothes, worn thread- 
bare in places, on his clean striped shirt, frayed 
slightly at the collar and cuffs, on his broken finger- 
nails, and on the red clay still adhering to his country 
boots. 

‘Tl wonder why you do these things?”’ she asked so 
softly that the words hardly reached him. “I 
wonder why?” | 

Though she had expected no response to her 
question, to her surprise he answered almost impul- 
sively as he stooped to pick up a bit of charred wood 
from the floor. 

“Well, one must fill one’s life, you know,” he said. 


132 THE ANCIENT LAW 


‘*‘T tried the other thing once but it did n’t count—it 
was hardly better than this, when all is said.”’ 

‘‘What ‘other thing’ do you mean?”’ 

‘“When I spoke I was thinking of what people 
have got to call ‘pleasure,’ ’’ he responded, “getting 
what one wants in life, or trying to get it and failing 
in the end.”’ 

‘‘And did you fail?’”’ she asked, with a simplicity 
which saved the blunt directness of the question. 

He laughed. ‘‘Do you think if I had succeeded, 
I’d be splitting wood in Bullfinch’s Hollow?” 

‘“‘And you care nothing for Kit Berry?” 

‘Oh, I like him—he’s an under dog.”’ 

“Then you are for the under dog, right or wrong, 
as I am?” she responded with a radiant look. 

“Well, I don’t know about that,’ he answered, 
‘‘but I have at least a fellow feeling for him. I’m 
an under dog myself, you see.” 

“But you won’t stay one long?”’ 

“That ’s the danger. When I come out on top I'll 
doubtless stop splitting wood and do something 
worse.” 

“‘T don’t believe it,’”’ she rejoined decisively. ‘‘You 
have never had a chance at the real thing before.”’ 

“You ’re right there,’’ he admitted, ‘‘I had never 
seen the real thing in my life until I came to Tappa- 
hannock.”’ 

“Do you mind telling me,’’ she asked, after an 
instant’s hesitation, ““‘why you came to Tappa- 
hannock? I can’t understand why anyone should 
ever come here.”’ 


BULLFINCH’S HOLLOW 133 


‘*T don’t know about the others, but I came because 
my road led here. I followed my road.” 

‘‘Not knowing where it would end?” 

He laughed again. ‘‘Not caring where it would 
end.”’ 

Her charming boyish smile rippled across her lips. 

“It isn’t necessary that I should understand to be 
glad that you kept straight on,” she said. 

“But the end isn’t yet,” he replied, with a gaiety 
beneath which she saw the seriousness in his face. 
‘“‘It may lead me off again.” 

“To a better place I hope.” 

‘Well, I suppose that would be easy to find,” he 
admitted, as he glanced beyond the doorway, ‘but 
I like Tappahannock. It has taken me in, you know, 
and there’s human nature even in Bullfinch’s Hollow.”’ 

“Oh, I suppose it’s hideous,’’? she remarked, 
following his look in the direction of the town, “ but 
I can’t judge. I’ve seen so little else, you know— 
and yet my City Beautiful is laid out in my mind.” 

“Then you carry it with you, and that is best.” 

As she was about to answer the door creaked above 
them and Mrs. Berry came down the short flight of 
steps, hastily fastening her calico dress as she 
descended. 

‘Well, I declare, who’d have thought to see you 
at this hour, Miss Emily,” she exclaimed effusively. 

“T thought you might need the milk early,” replied 
the girl, “‘and as Micah had an attack of rheumatism 
I brought it over on horseback.” 

While the old woman emptied the contents of the 


134 THE ANCIENT LAW 


can into a cracked china pitcher, Emily held out her 
hand to Ordway with an impulsive gesture. 

“We shall have a flourishing kitchen garden,” she 
said, ‘‘thanks to you.” 

Then taking the empty can from Mrs. Berry, she 
crossed the threshold, and remounted from the 
doorstep. 


CHAPTER XII 
A StTrRiInG oF Cora 


As Emity rode slowly up from Bullfinch’s Hollow, it 
seemed to her that the abandoned fields had borrowed 
an aspect which was almost one of sentiment. In 
the golden light of the sunrise even the Negro hovels, 
the refuse heaps and the dead thistles by the roadside, 
were transfigured until they appeared to lose their 
ordinary daytime ugliness; and the same golden 
light was shining inwardly on the swift impressions 
which crowded her thoughts. This strange inner 
illumination surrounded, she discovered now, each 
common fact which presented itself to her mind, and 
though the outward form of life was not changed, 
her mental vision had become suddenly enraptured. 
She did not stop to ask herself why the familiar 
events of every day appear so full of vivid interests— 
why the external objects at which she looked swam 
before her gaze in an atmosphere that was like a 
rainbow mist? It was sufficient to be alive to the 
finger tips, and to realise that everything in the great 
universe was alive around one—the air, the sky, the 
thistles along the roadside and the dust blowing before 
the wind, all moved, she felt, in harmony with the 
elemental pulse of life. On that morning she entered 
for the first time into the secret of immortality. 

135 


136 THE ANCIENT LAW 


And yet—was it only the early morning hour? 
she asked herself, as she rode back between the 
stretches of dried broomsedge. Or was it, she 
questioned a moment later, the natural gratification 
she had felt in a charity so generous, so unassuming 
as that of the man she had seen at Mrs. Berry’s? 

“It’s a pity he isn’t a gentleman and that his 
clothes are so rough,’’ she thought, and blushed the 
next instant with shame because she was ‘‘only a 
wretched snob.” 

‘““Whatever his class he 7s a gentleman,’ she began 
again, ‘“‘and he would be quite—even very—good- 
looking if his face were not so drawn and thin. What 
strange eyes he has—they are as blue as Blair’s and 
as young. No, he isn’t exactly good-looking—not 
in Beverly’s way, at least—but I should know his face 
again if I didn’t see it for twenty years. It’s odd 
that there are people one hardly knows whom one 
never forgets.”’ 

Her bare hands were on Major’s neck, and as she 
looked at them a displeased frown gathered her brows. 
She wondered why she had never noticed before 
that they were ugly and unwomanly, and it occurred 
to her that Aunt Mehitable had once told her that 
*‘ole Miss’’ washed her hands in buttermilk to keep 
them soft and white. “They ’re almost as rough 
as Mr. Smith’s,” she thought, “‘perhaps he noticed 
them.’”’ The idea worried her for a minute, for she 
hated, she told herself, that people should not think 
her ‘‘nice’’—but the golden iight was still flooding 
her thoughts and these trivial disturbances scattered 


A STRING OF CORAL > 137 


almost before they had managed to take shape. 
Nothing worried her long to-day, and as she dis- 
mounted at the steps, and ran hurriedly into the 
dining-room, she remembered Beverly and Amelia 
with an affection which she had not felt for years. 
It was as if the mere external friction of personalities 
had dissolved before the fundamental relation of 
soul to soul; even poor half-demented Aunt Mehitable 
wore in her eyes, at the minute, an immortal aspect. 

A little later when she rode in to the public school 
at Tappahannock, she discovered that the golden 
light irradiated even the questions in geography and 
arithmetic upon the blackboard; and coming out again, 
she found that it lay like sunshine on the newly turned 
vegetable rows in the garden. That afternoon for 
the first time she planted in a discarded pair of buck- 
skin gloves, and as soon as her work was over, she 
went upstairs to her bedroom, and regarded herself 
wistfully by the light from a branched candlestick 
which she held against the old greenish mirror. Her 
forehead was too high, she admitted regretfully, her 
mouth was too wide, her skin certainly was too 
brown. The blue cotton dress she wore appeared to 
her suddenly common and old-fashioned, and she 
began looking eagerly through her limited ward- 
robe in the hopeless quest for a gown that was 
softened by so much as a fall of lace about the throat. 
Then remembering the few precious trinkets saved 
from the bartered heirlooms of her dead mother, she 
got out the old black leather jewel case and went 
patiently over the family possessions. Among the 


138 ° THE ANCIENT LAW 


mourning brooches and hair bracelets that the box 
contained there was a necklace of rare pink 
coral, which she had meant to give Bella upon her 
birthday—but as her gaze was arrested now by the 
cheerful colour, she sat for a moment wondering if 
she might not honestly keep the beads for her own. 
Still undecided she went to the bureau again and 
fastened the string of coral around her firm brown 
throat. 

“T may wear it for a week or two at least,’’ she 
thought. ‘‘Why not?’’ It seemed to her foolish, 
almost unfeminine that she had never cared or thought 
about her clothes until to-day. ‘I’ve gone just like 
a boy—I ought to be ashamed to show my hands,”’ 
she said; and at the same instant she was conscious 
of the vivid interest, of the excitement even, which 
attached to this new discovery of the importance of 
one’s appearance. Before going downstairs she 
brushed the tangles out of her thick brown hair, and 
spent a half hour arranging it in a becoming fashion 
upon her neck. 

The next day Micah was well enough to carry the 
milk to Mrs. Berry’s, but three mornings afterward, 
when she came from the dairy with the can, the old 
negro was not waiting for her on the porch, and she 
found, upon going to his cabin, that the attack of 
rheumatism had returned with violence. There was 
nothing for her to do but carry the milk herself, so 
after leading Major from his stall, she mounted and 
rode, almost with a feeling of shyness, in the direction 
of Bullfinch’s Hollow. 


A STRING OF CORAL 139 


The door was closed this morning, and in answer 
to her knock, Mrs, Berry appeared, rubbing her eyes, 
beyond the threshold. 

“‘I declare, Miss Emily, you don’t look like yourself 
at all,’’ she exclaimed at the girl’s entrance, ‘‘it must 
be them coral beads you’ve got on, I reckon. They 
always was becomin’ things—I had a string once 
myself that I used to wear when my po’ dead husband 
was courtin’ me. Lord! Lord!” she added, bursting 
into sobs, ‘‘who’d have thought when I wore those 
beads that I’d ever have come to this? My po’ ma 
gave ’em to me herself—they were her weddin’ present 
from her first husband, and when she made up her 
mind to marry again, she kind of thought it warn’t 
modest to go aroun’ wearin’ what she’d got from her 
first marriage. She was always powerful sensitive to 
decency, was po’ ma. I’ve seen her scent vulgarity 
in the most harmless soundin’ speech you ever 
heard—such as when my husband asked her one day 
if she was afflicted with the budges in her knee, and 
she told me afterward that he had made a sneakin’ 
allusion to her leg. Ten years from that time, when 
all my trouble came upon me, she held that over me 
as a kind of warnin’. ‘If you’d listened to me, 
Sarindy,’ she used to say, ‘you’d never have got into 
this scrape of marryin’ a man who talked free befo’ 
women. For a man who is indecent in his language 
can’t be decent in his life,’ she said.” 

As she talked she was pouring the milk into the 
cracked pitcher, and Emily breaking in at the first 
pause, sought to hasten the washing of the can, by 


140 THE ANCIENT LAW 


bringing the old woman’s rambling attention back 
to Kit. 

‘““Has he had a quiet night?” she asked. 

“Well, yes, miss, in a way, but then he always 
was what you might call a quiet sleeper from the 
very hour that he was born. I remember old Aunt 
Jemima, his monthly nurse, tellin’ me that she had 
never in all her experience brought a more reliable 
sleeper into the world. He never used to stir, except 
to whimper now and then for his sugar rag when it 
slipped out of his mouth.” 

Hurriedly seizing the half-washed can, Emily 
caught up her skirt and moved toward the door. 

“Did you sit up with him last night?” she asked, 
turning upon the step. 

“That was Mr. Smith’s night, miss—he’s taken 
such a fancy to Kit that he comes every other night 
to watch by him—but he gets up and leaves now a 
little before daybreak. I heard him choppin’ wood 
before the sun was up.”’ 

“He has been very kind about it, has n’t he?”’ 

‘‘Lord, miss, he’s been a son and a brother as far 
as work goes, but I declare I can’t help wishin’ he 
was n’t quite so shut mouthed. Every blessed sound 
he utters I have to drag out of him like a fox out 
of a burrow. He’s a little cranky, too, I reckon, 
for he is so absent-minded that sometimes when you 
call his name he never even turns aroun’. But 
the Lord will overlook his unsociable ways, I s’pose, 
for he reads his Bible half the night’ when he sets 
up, jest as hard as if he was paid to doit. That’s 


A. STRING OF CORAL 141 


as good a recommendation, I reckon, as I need to 
have.” 

‘“‘T should think his charity would be a better one,’ 
rejoined Emily, with severity. 

‘‘Well, that ’s as it may be, Miss,’ returned Mrs. 
Berry, “I’m not ungrateful, I hope, and I’m much 
obliged for what he gives me—particularly for the 
coffee, which ain’t as thin as it might be seein’ it’s 
a present. But when all’s said I ain’t so apt to jedge 
by things like that because charity is jest a kind of 
Saint Vitus dance with some folks—it’s all in the 
muscles. Thank you, miss, yes, Kit is doin’ very 
well.” 

Mounting from the step, Emily turned back into 
the Tappahannock road, aware as she passed through 
the deserted fields that her exaltation of the 
morning had given way before a despondency which 
seemed to change the face of nature. The day 
was oppressive, the road ugly, Mrs. Berry more 
tiresome than usual—each of these things suggested 
itself as a possible reason for the dissatisfaction which 
she could not explain. Not once during her troubled 
mood did the name or the face of Ordway appear 
as the visible cause of her disturbance. So far, indeed, 
was his individual aspect from her reflections, that 
some hours later, when she rode back to school, it 
was with a shock of surprise that she saw him turn 
the corner by the new brick church, and come rapidly 
toward her from the brow of the long hill. That he 
had not at first seen her was evident, for he walked 
in an abstracted reverie with his eyes on the ground, 


142 THE ANCIENT LAW 


and when he looked up at last, she had drawn almost 
within speaking distance. At sight of his face her 
heart beat so quickly that she dropped the reins on 
Major’s neck, and raised her free hand to her bosom, 
while she felt the blood mount joyously to her 
cheeks; but, to her amazement, in the first instant of 
recognition, he turned abruptly away and entered 
the shop of a harness maker which happened to be 
immediately on his right. The action was so sudden 
that even as she quickened her horse’s pace, there 
flashed into her mind the humiliating conviction 
that he had sought purposely to avoid her. The 
throbs of her heart grew faster and then seemed to 
die utterly away, yet even as the warm blood turned 
cold in her cheeks, she told herself with spirit that it 
was all because she ‘‘could not bear to be disliked.” 
*“Why should he dislikeme?”’ she questioned presently ; 
“it is very foolish of him, and what have I done?” 
She searched her memory for some past rudeness of 
which she had been guilty, but there was nothing 
she could recall which would justify, however slightly, 
his open avoidance of a chance meeting. ‘* Perhaps 
he does n’t like the colour of myhair. I ’veheardmen 
were like that,’ she thought, ‘‘or the freckles on my 
face? Or the roughness of my hands?”’ But the 
instant afterward she saw how ridiculous were her 
surmises, and she felt angry with herself for having 
permitted them to appear in her mind. She remem- 
bered his blue eyes with the moonlight upon them, 
and she wondered why he had seemed to her more 
masculine than any man that she had ever known. 


A STRING OF CORAL 143 


With the memory of his eyes and his smile she smelt 
again the odour of the warm earth that had clung 
about him, and she was conscious that this and every- 
thing about him was strange and new as if she had 
never looked into a pair of blue eyes or smelt the 
odour of the soil before. 

After this meeting she did not see Ordway again 
for several weeks, and then it was only to pass him 
in the road one Sunday afternoon when he had 
finished his sermon in the old field. As he drew back 
among the thistles, he spoke to her gravely, with a 
deference, she noticed, which had the effect of placing 
him apart from her as a member of the working 
class. Since Kit Berry’s recovery she had not gone 
again to Bullfinch’s Hollow; and she could not fail to 
observe that even when an opportunity appeared, 
Ordway made no further effort to bridge the mere 
casual acquaintance which divided rather than united 
them. If it were possible to avoid conversation with 
her he did so by retiring into the background; if the 
event forced him into notice, he addressed her with 
a reserve which seemed at each meeting to widen 
the distance between them. 

Though she hardly confessed it to herself, her 
heart was wounded for a month or two by his 
frank indifference to her presence. Then one bright 
afternoon in May, wnen she had observed him turn 
out of his path as she rode up the hill, she saved the 
situation in her mind by the final triumph of her 
buoyant humour. 

“Everybody is privileged to be a little fool,’”’ she 


144 THE ANCIENT LAW 


said with a laugh, ‘“‘but when there ’s the danger of 
becoming a great big one, it.’s time to stop short and 
turn round. Now, Emily, my dear, you ’reto stop 
short from this minute. I hope you understand 
me.” 

That the Emily she addressed understood her very 
clearly was proved. a little later in the afternoon, 
when going upstairs to her bedroom, she unfastened 
the coral beads and laid them away again among the 
mourning brooches and the hair bracelets in the 
leather case. 


BOOK SECOND 
THE DAY OF RECKONING 





CHAPTER I 
In WuicH A STRANGER APPEARS 


On a bright June morning, when Ordway had been 
more than two years at Tappahannock, he came out 
upon Mrs. Twine’s little porch as soon as breakfast 
was over, and looked down the board walk for Harry 
Banks, who had fallen into the habit of accompany- 
ing him to the warehouse. From where he stood, 
under the hanging blossoms of the locust trees, he 
could see the painted tin roofs and the huddled 
chimneys of the town, flanked by the brazen sweep 
of the cornfields along the country roads. As his 
eyes rested on the familiar scene, they softened 
unconsciously with an affection which was almost 
paternal—for in the last two years Tappahannock 
had become a different place from the Tappahan- 
nock he had entered as a tramp on that windy after- 
noon in March. The town as it stood to-day was 
the town which he had helped to make, and behind 
each roll of progress there had been the informing 
purpose of his mind, as well as the strength © 
of his shoulder at the wheel. Behind the law 
which had closed the disreputable barrooms; be- 
hind the sentiment for decency which had purified 
the filthy hollows; behind the spirit of charity which 
had organised and opened, not only a reading room 

147 


148 THE ANCIENT LAW 


for the factory workers, but an industrial home for 
the poorer classes—behind each of these separate 
movements there had been a single energy to plan 
and act. In two years he had watched the little 
town cover the stretch of ten years’ improvement; 
in two years he had aroused and vitalised the com- 
munity into which he had come a stranger. Tap- 
pahannock was the child of his brain—the life that 
was in her to-day he had given her out of himself, 
and the love he felt for her was the love that one 
bestows upon one’s own. Standing there his eyes 
followed the street to the ugly brick church at the 
corner, and then as his mental vision travelled down 
the long, hot hill which led to the railroad, he could 
tell himself, with a kind of exultation, that there was 
hardly a dwelling along the way which had not some 
great or little reason to bless his name. Even Kelly, 
whose saloon he had closed, had been put upon his 
feet again and started, with a fair chance, in the 
tobacco market. Yes, a new life had been given 
him, and he had made good his promise to himself, 
The clothes he wore to-day were as rough as those in 
which he had chopped wood in Bullfinch’s Hollow; 
the room he lived in was the same small, bare lodging 
of Mrs. Twine’s; for though his position at Baxter’s 
now assured him a comfortable income, he had kept 
to his cramped manner of life in order that he might 
contribute the more generously to the lives of others. 
Out of his little he had given abundantly, and he had 
gained in return the happiness which he had ceased 
to make the object of his search. In looking back 


IN WHICH A STRANGER APPEARS 149 


over his whole life, he could honestly tell himself | 
that his happiest years since childhood were the 
ones that he had spent in Tappahannock. 

The gate closed with a slam, and Banks came up 
the short brick walk inside, mopping his heated face 
with a pink bordered handkerchief. 

“‘T’m a minute late,” he said, ‘‘but it doesn't 
matter, does it? The Trends asked me to breakfast.” 

“Tt doesn ’t matter in the least if you spent that 
minute with Milly,” replied Ordway, with a laugh, 
as he knocked the ashes out of his pipe and descen- 
ded the steps. ‘‘The hot weather has come early, 
hasn ’t it?” 

“Oh, we’re going in for a scorcher,” responded 
Banks, indifferently. There was a heavy gloom in 
his manner which was hardly to be accounted for by 
the temperature in which he moved, and as they 
closed the gate behind them and passed under the 
shade of the locust trees on the board walk, he 
turned to Ordway in an outburst which was little 
short of desperation. 

“T don’t know how it is—or whether it’s justa 
woman’s way,”’ he said, “‘but I never can be sure 
of Milly for ten minutes at a time. A month ago I 
was positive that she meant to marry me in the 
autumn, but now I’m in a kind of blue funk about 
her doing it at all. She’s never been the same since 
she went North in April.” 

“My dear chap, these things will vary, I suppose— 
‘though, mind you, I make no claim to exact knowl- 
edge of the sex.” 


150 THE ANCIENT LAW 


“Tt isn’t the sex,” said Banks, “it’s Milly.” 

“Well, I certainly can’t claim any particular 
knowledge of Milly. It would be rather presump- 
tuous if I did, considering I ’ve only seen her about a 
dozen times—mostly at a distance.”’ 

“‘T wish you knew her better, perhaps you could 
help me,’’ returned Banks in a voice of melancholy. 
‘““‘To save the life of me I don’t see how it is—I’ve 
done my best—I swear I’ve done my best—yet 
nothing somehow seems to suit her. She wants to 
make me over from the skin and even that doesn’t 
satisfy her. When my hair is short she wants it 
long, and when it ’slong she says she wants it short. 
She can’t stand me in coloured cravats and when I 
put on a black tie she calls me an undertaker. I 
had to leave off my turtle-dove scarf-pin and this 
morning,’ he rolled his innocent blue eyes, like pale 
marbles, in the direction of Ordway, ‘“‘she actualiy 
got into a temper about my stockings.”’ 

‘It seems to be a case for sympathy,’ commented 
Ordway seriously, ‘‘but hardly, I should say, for 
marriage. Imagine, my dear Banks, what a hell 
you’d make out of your domesticity. Suppose you 
give her up and bear it like a man?” 

‘Give her up? to what?” 

‘‘Well, to her own amiability, we ’ll say.” 

“T can’t”? said Banks, waving his pink bordered 
handkerchief before his face in an effort either to 
disperse the swarming blue flies or to conceal the 
working of hisemotion. ‘‘1’d die—I'd kill myself— 
that’s the awful part of it. The more she bangs me 


IN WHICH A STRANGER APPEARS 1sr 


over the head, the more I feel that I can’t live with- 
out her. Is that natural, do you s’pose?’’ he 
inquired uneasily, ‘‘or have I gone clean crazy?”’ 

Checking his smile severely, Ordway turned and 
slipped his left arm affectionately through his 
companion ’s. 

‘“‘I ’ve heard of similar cases,’ he remarked, ‘‘ though 
I confess, they sounded a little strained.” 

“Do you think I’d better see a doctor? I will if 
you say so.” 

““By no means. Go off on a trip.” 

‘““And leave Milly here? I’d jump out of the train 
—and, I reckon, she ’d bang my head off for doing it.”’ 

“But if it’s as bad as that, you couldn’t be much 
more miserable without her.” 

“TI know it,’’ replied Banks obstinately, ‘‘but it 
would be a different sort of miserableness, and that 
happens to be the sort that I can’t stand.” 

“Then I give it up,’ said Ordway, cheerfully, 
“‘there’s no hope but marriage.” 

With his words they turned under the archway of 
Baxter’s ‘warehouse, and Banks’s passionate con- 
fidences were extinguished in the odour of tobacco. 

A group of men stood talking loudly in the centre 
of the building, and as Ordway approached, Baxter 
broke away, with his great rolling laugh, and came 
to join him at the door of his private office. 

‘“‘Catesby and Frazier have got into a squabble 
about that lot of tobacco they brought in last Feb- 
ruary,’’ he said, ‘‘and they have both agreed to accept 
your decision in the matter.” 


152 THE ANCIENT LAW 


Ordway nodded, without replying, as he followed 
the other through the doorway. Such judicial ap- 
peals to him were not uncommon, and his power 
of pacification, as his employer had once remarked, 
was one of his principal qualifications for the tobacco 
market. | 

“Shali I hear them now? or would it be as well to 
give them time to cool off?” he asked presently, 
while Baxter settled his great person in a desk chair 
that seemed a size too small to contain it. 

“If they can cool off on a day like this they ’re 
lucky dogs,” returned Baxter, with a groan, ‘“‘how- 
ever, I reckon you might as well get it over and let 
’em go home and stew in peace. By the way, Smith, 
I forgot to tell you that Major Leary—he’s the 
president of the Southside Bank, you know, was 
asking me yesterday if I could tell him anything 
about you before you came to work for me.” 

‘““Of the Southside Bank,” repeated Ordway, while 
his hand closed tightly over a paper weight, represent- 
ing a gambolling kitten, which lay on Baxter’s desk. 
With the words he was conscious only of the muffled 
drumming of his pulses, and above the discord in 
his ears, the cheerful tones of Baxter sounded like 
an echo rather than a real voice. At the instant he 
was back again in his room in the great banking 
house of Amos, Bonner & Amos, in the. midst of the 
pale brown walls, the black oak furniture and the 
shining leather covered volumes behind the glass 
doors of the bookcases. With peculiar vividness he 
remembered the eccentric little bird on the bronze 


IN WHICH A STRANGER APPEARS 153 


clock on the mantel, which had hopped from its 
swinging perch to strike the hour with its beak; 
and through the open windows he could hear still the 
din of traffic in the street below and the ceaseless, 
irregular tread of footsteps upon the pavement. 

‘‘Oh, I didn’t mean to raise your hopes too high,” 
remarked Baxter, rising from his chair to slap him 
affectionately upon the shoulder, “he isn’t goinz to 
make you president of the bank, but of the Citizen’s 
Improvement League, whose object is to oust Jasper 
Trend, you know, in the autumn. The Major told 
me before he left that you ’d done as much for Tappa- 
hannock in two years as any other man had done in 
a lifetime. I said I thought he’d hit the nail pretty 
squarely, which is something he doesn’t generally 
manage to do.” 

““So I’m to fight Jasper Trend, am I?’’ asked Ord- 
way, with sudden interest. The sound of his throb- 
bing arteries was no longer in his ears, and as he 
spoke, he felt that his past life with his old identity 
‘had departed from him. In the swift renewal of his 
confidence he had become again ‘‘Ten Command- 
ment Smith” of Tappahannock. 

‘“Well, you see, Jasper has been a precious bad 
influence around here,’’ pursued Baxter, engrossed 
in the political scheme he was unfolding. “The 
only thing on earth he’s got torecommend him is his 
pretty daughter. Now, I’ve a soit enough heart, 
as everybody knows, when the ladies come about— 
particularly if they ’re pretty—but I ’m ready to stand 
up and say that Jasper Trend can’t be allowed to 


154 THE ANCIENT LAW 


run this town on the platform of pure chivalry. 
There’s such a thing as fairness, suh, even where 
women are concerned, and I’ll back my word with 
my oath that it ain’t fair!” 

“And I’ll back your word with another that it 
isn ’t,’’ rejoined Ordway. 

“‘There’s no doubt, I reckon,” continued Baxter, 
“that Jasper has connived with those disorderly 
saloons that you ’ve been trying to shut up, and for 
all his money and the men he employs in the cotton 
mills there ’s come a considerable reaction against him 
in public sentiment. Now, I ain’t afraid to say, 
Smith,” he concluded with an ample flourish of his 
dirty hand, ‘“‘that the fact that there’s any public 
sentiment at all in Tappahannock is due to you. 
Until you came here there weren’t six decent men 
you could count mixed up in the affairs of this town. 
Jasper had everything his own way, that’s why he 
hates you.” 

‘But I wasn’t even aware that he did me so much 
honour.” 

“You mean he has n’t told you his feelings to your 
face. Well, he has n’t gone so far as to confide them 
to me either—but even if I ain’t a woman, I can hear 
some things that ain’t spoke outinwords. He ’smade 
a dirty town and you’re sweepin’ it clean—do you 
think it likely that it makes him love you?” 

“He ’s welcome to feel about me any way hepleases, 
but do you know, Baxter,’”’ he added with his whim- 
sical gravity, ‘I’ve a pretty strong conviction that 
I’d make a jolly good street sweeper.” 


IN WHICH A STRANGER APPEARS 155 


{?? ce 


“I reckon you’re right!’’ roared Baxter, ‘‘and 
when you ’re done, we ’ll shoot off some sky-rockets 
over the job—so there you are, ain’t you?”’ 

“All right—but there ’s Jasper Trend also,” retorted 
Ordway. 

“Oh, he can afford to send off his own sky-rockets. 
We need n’t bother about him. He won't be out of 
a job like Kelly, you know. Great Scott!” he added, 
chuckling, ‘‘I can see your face now when you marched 
in here the day after you closed Kelly’s saloon, and 
told me you had to start a man in tobacco because 
you ’d taken him out of whiskey.” 

His laugh shook through his figure until Ordway 
saw his fat chest heave violently beneath his alpaca 
coat. Custom had made the younger man almost 
indifferent to the external details which had once 
annoyed him in his employer, and he hardly noticed 
now that Baxter’s coat was turning from black to 
green and that the old ashes from his pipe had 
lodged in the crumpled bosom of his shirt. Baxter 
was—well, Baxter, and tolerance was a virtue which 
one acquired sooner or later in Tappahannock. 

‘“‘T suppose I might as well get at Catesby and 
Frazier now,’ remarked Ordway, watching the other 
disinter a tattered palm leaf fan from beneath a dusty 
pile of old almanacs and catalogues. 

‘“Wait a minute first,” said Baxter, ‘‘there ’s some- 
thing I want to say as soon as I get settled. I ain’t 
made for heat, that’s certain,’’ he pursued, as he 
pulled off his coat, and hung it from a nail in the wall, 
“it sweats all my morals out of me.” 


156 THE ANCIENT LAW 


Detaching the collar from his shirt, he placed it 
above his coat on the nail, and then rolling up his 
shirt sleeves, sank, with a panting breath, back into 
his chair. 

“Tf I were you I’d get out of this at night anyway, 
Smith,” he urged. ‘‘Why don’t you try boarding 
for the next few months over at Cedar Hill. It 
would be a godsend to the family, now that Miss 
Emily’s school has stopped.” 

“But I don’t suppose they’d take me in,” replied 
Ordway, staring out into the street, where the dust 
rose like steam in the air, and the rough-coated 
country horses toiled patiently up the long hill. 
Across the way he saw the six stale currant buns and 
the three bottles of pale beer behind the fly-specked 
window panes of a cheap eating house. In front of 
them, a Negro woman, barefooted, with her ragged 
calico dress tucked up about her waist, was sousing 
the steaming board walk with a pailful of dirty water. 
From his memory of two years ago there floated the 
mingled odours of wild flowers and freshly turned 
earth in the garden of Cedar Hill, and Emily appeared 
in his thoughts only as an appropriate figure against 
the pleasant natural background of the lilacs and the 
meadows. In the past year he had seen her hardly 
more than a dozen times—mere casual glimpses for 
the most part—and he had almost forgotten his 
earlier avoidance of her, which had resulted from an 
instinctive delicacy rather than from any premed- 
itated purpose. His judgment had told him that he 
had no right to permit a woman to become his 


IN WHICH A STRANGER APPEARS 157 


friend in ignorance of his past; and at the same time 
he was aware of a terrible shrinking from intruding 
his old self, however remotely, into the new life at 
Tappahannock. When the choice came between 
confessing his sin and sacrificing the chance 
acquaintance, he had found it easiersimply to keep 
away from her actual presence. Yet his interest 
in her had been so closely associated with his larger 
feeling for humanity, that he could tell himself with 
sincerity that it was mere folly which put her for- 
ward as an objection to his boarding for the 
summer at Cedar Hill. 

“The truth is,’’ admitted Baxter, after a pause, 
‘that Mrs. Brooke spoke to me about having to take 
a boarder or two, when I went out there to pay Mr. 
Beverly for that tobacco I could n’t sell.” 

“So you bought it in the end,”’ laughed Ordway, 
‘fas you did last year after sending me out there on 
a mission?”’ 

“Yes, I bought it,” replied Baxter, blushing like 
a boy under the beads of perspiration upon his face. 
“I may as well confess it, though I tried to keep it 
secret. But I ask you as man to man,” he demanded 
warmly, ‘‘was there another blessed thing on God’s 
earth for me to do?” 

“Let Mr. Beverly go about his business—that 's 
what I’d have done.” | 

“Oh, no, you would n’t,” protested Baxter softly, 
“not when he’d ruin himself for you to-morrow if 
you were to walk out and ask him.” 

“But he couldn’t,” insisted Ordway with the 


158 THE ANCIENT LAW 


brutality of the naked fact, “he did that little job 
on his own account too long ago.”’ 

‘But that ain’t the point, Smith,” replied Baxter 
in an awed and solemn accent. ‘The point ain’t 
that he couldn’t, but that he wold. As I make it 
out that’s the point which has cost me money on him 
for the last thirty years.” 

‘““Oh, well, I suppose it’s a charity like any other, 
only the old fool is so pompous about his poverty 
that it wears me out.” 

‘It does at Tappahannock, but it won’t when you 
get out to Cedar Hill, that’s the difference between 
Mr. Beverly in the air and Mr. Beverly in the flesh. 
The one wears you out, the other rests you for all 
his darnation foolishness. Now, you can board out 
there for twenty-five doilars a month and put a little 
ready money where it ought to be in Mrs. Brooke’s 
pocket.” 

“Of course I’d like it tremendously,” said Ordway, 
after a moment in which the perfume of the lilacs 
filled his memory. ‘‘It would be like stepping into 
heaven after that stifling little room under the tin 
roof at Mrs. Twine’s. Do you know I slept out in 
the fields every hot night last summer?” 

“You see you ain’t a native of these parts,” 
remarked Baxter with a large resigned movement of 
his palm leaf fan, ‘‘and your skin ain’t thick enough 
to keep out the heat. I'll speak to ’em at Cedar Hill 
this very day, and if you like, I reckon, you can move 
out at the beginning of the week. I hope if you do, 
Smith, that you'll bear with Mr. Beverly. There’s 


IN WHICH A STRANGER APPEARS 159 


nothing in the universe that he wouldn’t do for me 
if he had the chance. It ain’t his fault, you see, that 
he’s never had it.” 

“‘Oh, I promise you I'll bear with him,” laughed 
Ordway, as he left the office and went out into the 
warehouse. 

The knot of men was still in the centre of the 
building, and as Ordway walked down the long floor 
in search of Catesby and Frazier, he saw that a 
stranger had drifted in during his half hour in Baxter’s 
office. With his first casual glance all that he 
observed of the man was a sleek fair head, slightly 
bald in the centre, and a pair of abnormally flat 
shoulders in a light gray coat, which had evidently 
left a clothing shop only a day or two before. Then 
as Frazier—a big, loud voiced planter—turned toward 
him with the exclamation, ‘‘here’s Smith, himself, 


now!’*—he saw the stranger wheel round abruptly 
and give vent the next instant to a sharp whistle 
of surprise. 


“Well, I'll be damned!”’ he said. 

For a minute the tobacco dust filled Ordway’s 
throat and nostrils, and he felt that he was stifling 
for a breath of air. The dim length of the warehouse 
and the familiar shadowy figures of the planters 
receded before his eyes, and he saw again the bare 
walls of the prison chapel, with the rows of convicts 
seated in the pale, greenish light. With his 
recognition of the man before him, it seemed to him . 
suddenly that the last year in Tappahannock was all 
a lie. The prison walls, the grated windows, and 


160 THE ANCIENT LAW 


the hard benches of the shoe shop were closer real- 
ities than were the open door of the warehouse and 
the free, hot streets of the little town 

‘“‘I am very happy to meet you, Mr. Smith,” said — 
the stranger, as he held out his hand with a good- 
humoured smile. 

“T beg your pardon,” returned Ordway quietly, 
“but I did not catch your name.” 

At the handshake a chill mounted from his finger 
tips to his shoulder, but drawing slightly away he 
stood his ground without so much as the perceptible 
flicker of an eyelash. 

““My name is Brown—Horatio Brown, very much 
at your service,” answered the other, with a manner 
like that of a successful, yet obsequious commercial 
travelier. 

It was on Ordway’s tongue to retort: ‘‘ You lie— 
it’s Gus Wherry!’’—but checking the impulse with 
a frown, he turned on his heel and asked the two 
men for whom he was looking to come with him to 
settle their disagreement in Baxter’s office. As he 
moved down the building an instant later, it was ‘with 
an effort that he kept his gaze fixed straight ahead 
through the archway, for he ‘was aware that 
every muscle in his body pricked him to turn 
back and follow Wherry to the end. That the 
man would be forced, in self-defence, to keep his 
secret for a time at least, he had caught in the smiling 
insolence of his glance; but that it was possible to 
enter into a permanent association or even a treaty 
with Gus Wherry, he knew to be a supposition that 


IN WHICH A STRANGER APPEARS 161 


was utterly beyond the question. The crime for 
which the man had been sentenced he could not 
remember; but he had a vague recollection that 
something morbidly romantic in his history had 
combined with his handsome face to give him an 
ephemeral notoriety as the Adonis of imaginative 
shop-girls. Even in prison Wherry had attained a cer- 
tain prominence because of his beauty, which at the 
time when Ordway first saw him had been conspic- 
uous in spite of his convict’s clothes. In the years. 
since then his athletic figure had grown a trifle too 
heavy, and his fair hair had worn a little thin on the 
crown of his head; yet these slight changes of time 
had left him, Ordway admitted reluctantly, still 
handsome in the brawny, full-blooded stvle, which 
had generally made fools of women. His lips were 
still as red, his features as severely classic, and his 
manner was not less vulgar, and quite as debonnair 
as in the days wnen the newspapers had clamoured 
for his pictures. Even the soft, girlish cleft in his 
smooth-shaven chin, Ordway remembered now, with 
a return of the instinctive aversion with which it had 
first inspired him. Yet he was obliged to confess, 
as he walked ahead of Catesby and Frazier down 
the dusty floor of the warehouse, that if Wherry 
had been less of an uncompromising rascal, he 
would probably have made a particularly amiable 
acquaintance. 


CHAPTER II 
OrpwaAyY COMPROMISES WITH THE PAST 


WHEN Ordway came out of Baxter’s office, he 
found that Gus Wherry had left the warehouse, but 
the effect upon him of the man’s appearance in 
Tappahannock was not to be overcome by the tem- 
porary withdrawal of his visible presence. Not 
only the town, but existence itself seemed altered, 
and in a way polluted, by the obtrusion of Wherry’s 
personality upon the scene. Though he was not in 
the building, Ordway felt an angry conviction that 
he was in the air. It was impossible to breathe 
reely lest he might by accident draw in some insidi- 
ous poison which would bring him under the influence 
of his past life and of Gus Wherry. 

As he went along the street at one o’clock 
to his dinner at Mrs. Twine’s, he was grateful for the 
intensity of the sun, which rendered him, while he 
walked in it, almost incapable of thought. There 
‘was positive relief in the fact that he must count the 
uneven lengths of board walk which it was necessary 
for him to traverse, and the buzzing of the blue flies 
before his face forced his attention, at the minute, 
from the inward to the outward disturbance. 

When he reached the house, Mrs. Twine met him 
at the door and led him, with an inquiry as to his 

162 


A COMPROMISE WITH THE PAST 163 


susceptibility to sunstroke, into the awful gloom of 
her tightly shuttered parlour. 

‘“‘T declar’ you do look well nigh in yo’ last gasp,”” 
she remarked cheerfully, bustling into the dining- 
room for a palm leaf fan. ‘‘Thar, now, come right 
in an’ set down an’ eat yo’ dinner. Hot or cold, 
glad or sorry, I never saw the man yit that could 
stand goin’ without his dinner at the regular 
hour. Sech is the habit in some folks that I remem- 
ber when old Mat Fawling’s second wife died he 
actually hurried up her funeral an hour earlier so 
as to git back in time for dinner. ‘It ain’t that I’m 
meanin’ any disrespect to Sary, Mrs. Twine,’ he said 
to me right whar I was layin’ her out, ‘but the truth 
is that I can’t even mourn on an empty stomach. 
The undertaker put it at twelve,’ he said, “but I 
reckon we might manage to git out to the cemetery 
by eleven.’ ’’ 

‘‘All the same if you'll give me a slice of bread and 
a glass of milk, I’ll take it standing,’ remarked 
Ordway. ‘I’m sorry to leave you, Mrs. Twine, even 
for a few months,’”’ he added, ‘‘but I think I’ll try 
to get board outside the town until the summer is 
over.” 

“Well, Til hate to lose you, suh, to be sure,’ 
responded Mrs. Twine, dealing out the fried batter 
with a lavish hand despite his protest, ‘‘for I respect 
you as a fellow mortal, though I despise you as a sex.”’ 

Her hard eyes softened as she looked at him; but 
his gaze was on the walnut coloured oilcloth, where 
the flies dispersed lazily before the waving elm branch 


164 THE ANCIENT LAW 


in the hands of the small Negro, and so he did not 
observe the motherly tenderness which almost 
beautified her shrewish face. 

““You’ve been very kind to me,”’ he said, as he 
put his glass and plate down, and turned toward the 
door. ‘‘ Whatever happens I shall always remem- 
ber you and the children with pleasure.” 

She choked violently, and looking back at the 
gasping sound, he saw that her eyes had filled sud- 
denly with tears. Lifting a corner of her blue 
gingham apron, she mopped her face in a furious 
effort to conceal the cause of her unaccustomed 
emotion. 

“I declar’ I’m all het up,’’ she remarked in an 
indignant voice, “but if you should ever need a 
friend in sickness, Mr. Smith,’’ she added, after a 
moment in which she choked and coughed under the 
shelter of her apron, ‘‘you jest send for me an’ I'll 
drop every thing I’ve got an’ go. I'll leave husband 
an’ children without a thought, suh, an’ thar’s nothin’ 
I won’t do for you with pleasure, from makin’ a 
mustard plaster to layin’ out yo’ corpse. When I’m 
a friend, I’m a friend, if I do say it, an’ you’ve had 
a way with me from the very first minute that I 
clapped eyes upon you. ‘He may not have sech 
calves as you’ve got,’ was what IJ said to Bill, ‘but 
he’s got .a manner of his own, an’ I reckon it’s the 
manner an’ not the calves that isthe man.’ Not 
that I’m meaning any slur on yo’ shape, suh,’”’ she 
hastened to explain. 

‘‘Well, I’ll come to see you now and then,’ 


said 


A COMPROMISE WITH THE PAST 165 


Ordway, smiling, ‘‘and I shan’t forget to take the 
children for a picnic as I promised.” But with the 
words he remembered Gus Wherry, as he had seen 
him standing in the centre of Baxter’s warehouse, 
and it seemed to him that even his promise to the 
children was rendered vain and worthless. 

The next day was Sunday, and immediately after 
dinner he walked over to Baxter’s house, where he 
learned that Mrs. Brooke had expressed her willing- 
ness to receive him upon the following afternoon. 

‘‘We had to talk Mr. Beverly over,” said Baxter, 
chuckling. ‘‘At first he didn’t like the idea because 
of some notion he’d got out of his great-grandfather’s 
head about the sacredness of the family circle. How- 
ever, he’s all right now, though if you take my advice, 
Smith, you'll play a game of dominoes with him 
occasionally just to keep him kind of soft. The 
chief thing he has against you is your preachin’ in 
the fields, for he told me he could never bring him- 
self to countenance religion out of doors. He seems 
to think that it ought to be kept shut up tight.” 

“Well, I’m glad he doesn’t have to listen to me,” 
responded Ordway. ‘“‘By the way, you know I’m 
speaking in Catlett’s grove of pines now. It’s 
pleasanter away from the glare of the sun.’’ Then 
as Baxter pressed him to come back to supper, he 
declined the oppressive hospitality and went back 
to Mrs. Twine’s. 

That afternoon at five o’clock he went out to the 
grove of pines on theSouthern edge of the town, to find 
his congregation gathered ahead of him on the rude 


166 THE ANCIENT LAW 


plank benches which had been placed among the 
trees. The sunshine fell in drops through the tent 
of boughs overhead, and from the southwest a pleas- 
ant breeze had sprung up, blowing the pine needles 
in eddies about his feet. At sight of the friendly 
faces gathered so closely around him, he felt his 
foreboding depart as if it had been blown from him 
by the pure breeze; and beginning his simple dis- 
course, he found himself absorbed presently in the 
religious significance of his subject, which chanced 
to be an interpretation of the parable of the prodigal 
son. Not until he was midway of his last sentence 
did he discover that Gus Wherry was standing just 
beyond the little wildrose thicket on the edge 
of the grove. 

In the instant of recognition the words upon his 
lips sounded strangely hollow and meaningless in his 
ears, and he felt again that the appearance of the 
man had given the lie, not only to his identity, but 
to his life. He knew himself at the instant to have 
changed from Daniel Smith to Daniel Ordway, and 
the name that he had worn honestly in Tappahannock 
showed to him suddenly as a falsehood and a cheat. 
Even his inward motive was contemptible in his 
eyes, and he felt himself dragged back in a single 
minute to the level upon which Wherry stood. As 
he appeared to Wherry, so he saw himself now by 
some distorted power of vision, and even his religion 
seemed but a convenient mask which he had picked 
up and used. When he went on a moment later with 
his closing words, he felt that the mockery of his 


A COMPROMISE WITH THE PAST 16; 


speech must be evident to the ears of the congregatior 
that knew and loved him. 

The gathering broke up slowly, but after speaking 
to several men who stood near him, Ordway turned 
away and went out into the road which led 
from Tappahannock in the direction of Cedar Hill. 
Only after he had walked rapidly for a mile, did the 
sound of footsteps, following close behind him, cause 
him to wheel round abruptly with an impatient 
exclamation. As he did so, he saw that Wherry had 
stopped short in the road before him. 

‘““T wanted to tell you how much obliged I am for 
your talk, Mr. Smith,’”’ he said, with a smile which 
appeared to flash at the same instant from his eyes 
and his teeth. “‘I declare you came pretty near con- 
verting me—by Jove, you did. It wouldn’t be 
convenient to listen to you too often.” 

Whatever might be said of the effusive manner 
of his compliments, his gocd humour was so evident 
in his voice, in his laugh, and even in his conspicuously 
flashing teeth, that Ordway, who had been prepared 
for a quarrel, was rendered almost helpless by so 
peaceable an encounter. Turning out of the road, 
he stepped back among the tall weeds growing in 
the corner of the old ‘‘worm’”’ fence, and rested his 
tightly clinched hand on the topmost rail. 

“If you have anything to say to me, you will do 
me a favour by getting it over as soon as possible,” 
he rejoined shortly. 

Wherry had taken off his hat and the red disc of 
the setting sun made an appropriate frame for his 


168 THE ANCIENT LAW 


handsome head, upon which his fair hair grew, 
Ordway noticed, in the peculiar waving circle which 
is found on the heads of ancient statues. 

“Well, I can’t say that I’ve anything to remark 
except that I congratulate you on your eloquence,’’ 
he replied, with a kind of infernal amiability. ‘‘If 
this is your little game, you are doing it with a success 
which I envy from my boots up.” 

“Since this is your business with me, there is no 
need for us to discuss it further,’’ returned Ordway, 
at white heat. : ! 

“Oh, but I say, don’t hurry—vyhat’s the use? 
You're afraid I’m going to squeeze you, now, isn’t 
that it?” 

“You'll get nothing out of me if you try.” 

‘‘That’s as much as I want, I guess. Have I asked 
you for as much asa darned cent? MHaven’t I played 
the gentleman from the first minute that I spotted 
your” 

Ordway nodded. ‘Yes, I suppose you’ve been 
as fair as you knew how,” he answered, ‘‘I’ll do you 
the justice to admit that.” 

“Weil, I tell you now,” said Wherry, growing con- 
fidential as he approached, “‘my object isn’t blackmail, 
it’s human intercourse. I want a decent word or 
two, that’s all, on my honour.”’ 

“But I won’t talk to you. I’ve nothing further 
to say, that’s to be understood.”’ 

““You’re a confounded bully, that’s what you are,’’ 
observed Wherry, in the playful tones which he might 
have used to a child or an animal. ‘‘Now, I don’t 


A COMPROMISE WITH THE PAST 169 


want a blooming cent out of you, that’s flat—all I 
ask for is a pleasant word or two just as from man 
to man.”’ 

“Then why did you follow me? And what are 
you after in Tappahannock?” 

Wherry laughed hilariously, while his remarkably 
fine teeth became the most prominent feature in 
his face. | 

‘The reply to your question, Smith,” he answered 
pleasantly, ‘is that I followed you to say that you’re 
an all-fired, first rate sort of a preacher—there’s not 
harm in that much, is there? If you don’t want me 
to chaff you about it, I’ll swear to be as dead serious 
on the subject as if it were my wife’s funeral. What 
I want is your hand down, I say—no matter what 
is trumps!” | 

‘““My hand down for what?’’ demanded Ordway. 

‘“‘Just for plain decency, nothing more, I swear. 
You’ve started on your road, and I’ve started on mine, 
and the square thing is to live and let live, that’s as 
I see it. Leave room for honest repentance to go to 
work, but don’t begin to pull back before it’s had 
a chance to begin. Ain’t we all prodigals, when it 
comes to that, and the only difference is that some 
of us don’t get a bite at the fatted calf.” 

For a moment Ordway stared in silence to where - 
the other stood with his face turned toward the red 
light of the sunset. 

““We’re all prodigals,”’ repeated Wherry, as if 
impressed by the ethical problem he had uttered 
unawares, ‘‘you and me and the President and every 


170 THE ANCIENT LAW 


man. We've all fallen from grace, ain’t we?—and 
it’s neither here nor there that you and I have got 
the swine husks while the President has stuffed and 
eaten the fatted calf.” 

“Tf you’ve honestly meant to begin again, I have 
certainly no wish to interfere,” remarked Ordway, 
ignoring the other’s excursion into the field of phil- 
osophy. As he spoke, however, it occurred to him 
that Wherry’s reformation might have had better 
chance of success if it had been associated with fewer 
physical advantages. 

“Well, I’m much obliged to you,’’ said Wherry, 
‘“‘and I'll say the same by you, here’s my hand on it. 
Rise or fall, we’ll play fair.’ 

“You haven’t told me yet why you came to 
Tappahannock,” rejoined Ordway, shortly. 

“Oh, a little matter of business. Are you settled 
here now?”’ 

‘““At the moment you can answer that question 
better than I.” 

“You mean when I come, you quit?” 

Ordway nodded. ‘‘That’s something like it.” 

‘“‘Well, I shan’t drive you out if I can help it—I 
hate to play the sneak. The truth is if you’d only 
get to believe it, there’s not a more peaceable fellow 
‘alive if I don’t get backed up into a place where 
there’s no way out. When it comes to that I like 
the clean, straight road best, and I always have. 
From first to last, though, it’s the women that have. 
been dead against me, and I may say that a woman— 
one or more of ’em—has been back of every single 


A COMPROMISE WITH THE PAST 1971 


scrape I ever got into in my life. If I’d had ten 
thousand a year and a fine looking wife, I’d have 
been a pillar in the Church and the father of a family. 
My tastes all lean that way,’ he added sentimentally. 
‘“‘T’ve always had a weakness for babies, and J’ve 
got it to this day.” 

As he could think of nothing to reply to this touch- 
ing confession, Ordway picked up a bit of wood from 
the ground, and taking out his knife, began whittling 
carelessly while he waited. 

‘“‘T suppose you think I want to work you for that 
fat old codger in the warehouse,’’ observed Wherry 
suddenly, passing lightly from the pathetic to the 
facetious point of view, “‘but I'll give you my word 
I haven’t thought of it a minute.”’ 

‘“‘T’m glad you haven’t,” returned Ordway, quietly, 
“for you would be disappointed.”’ 

“You mean you wouldn’t trust me?” 

“‘IT mean there’s no place there. Whether I trust 
you or not is another question—and I don’t.” 

“Do you think I’d turn sneak?”’ 

“T think if you stay in Tappahannock that Vl 
clear out.” 

“Well, you’re a darn disagreeable chap,” said 
Wherry, indignantly, ‘particularly after all you’ve 
had to say about the prodigal. But, all the same,”’ 
he added, as his natural amiability got the better of 
his temper, ‘“‘it isn’t likely that I’il pitch my tent 
here, so you needn’t begin to pack for a day or two 
at least.”’ 

‘““Do you expect to go shortly?’ 


172 THE ANCIENT LAW 


*“How about to-morrow? Would that suit you?” 
“Yes,” said Ordway, gravely, ‘‘better than the 
day afterward.” He threw the bit of wood away 
and looked steadily into the other’s face. “If I can 
help you live honestly, Iam ready to do it,’’ he added. 

“Peady? How?” 

““However I can.” 

“Well, you can’t—not now,” returned Wherry, 
laughing, ‘‘because I’ve worked that little scheme 
already without your backing. Honesty is going to 
be my policy from yesterday on. Did you, by the 
way,” he added abruptly, “ever happen to run up 
against Jasper Trend?” 

“Jasper Trend?” exclaimed Ordway, “why, yes, 
he owns the cotton mills.” 

““He makes a handsome little pile out of ’em too, 
I guess?” 

“T believe he does. Are you looking for a job 
With him?”’ 

At this Wherry burst again into his hilarious 
humour. ‘If I am,’’ he asked jokingly, “will you 
promise to stand off and not spoil the game?”’ 

“I have nothing to do with Trend,’ replied Ord- 
way, ‘“‘but the day you come here is my last in 
Tappahannock.”’ 

“Well, I’m sorry for that,’’ remarked Wherry, 
pleasantly, “‘for it appears to be a dull enough place 
even with the addition of your presence.’’ He put 
en his hat and held out his hand with a friendly 
gesture. ‘‘Are you ready to walk back now?” he 
inquired. 


A COMPROMISE WITH THE PAST 173 


**When I am,” answered Ordway, “I shall walk 
back alone.” 

Even this rebuff Wherry accepted with his in- 
vincible good temper. 

“‘Every man to his company, of course,’ he re- 
sponded, ‘‘but as to my coming to Tappahannock, 
if it is any comfort to you to know it, you needn’t 
begin to pack.” 


CHAPTER III 
A CHANGE oF LODGING 


WHEN Ordway awoke the next morning, it seemed 
to him that Wherry had taken his place among the 
other nightmares, which, combined with the reflected 
heat from the tin roof, had rendered his sleep broken 
and distracted. With the sunrise his evil dreams 
and his recollections of Wherry had scattered to- 
gether, and when, after the early closing at Baxter’s 
‘warehouse, he drove out to Cedar Hill, with the 
leather bag containing his few possessions at his 
feet, he felt that there had been something morbid, 
almost inhuman, in the loathing aroused in him by 
the handsome face of his fellow prisoner. In any 
case, for good or for evil, he determined to banish the 
man utterly from his thoughts. 

The vehicle in which he sat was an ancient gig 
driven by a decrepit Negro, and as it drew up before 
the steps at Cedar Hill, he was conscious almost of a 
sensation of shame because he had not approached 
the ruined mansion on foot. Then descending 
over the dusty wheel, he lifted out his bag, and 
trapped twice upon the open door with the greenish 
knocker which he supposed had once been shining 
brass. Through the hall a sleepy breeze blew 
from the honeysuckle arbour over the back 

174 


A CHANGE OF LODGING 175 


porch, and at his right hand the swinging sword 
still clanked against the discoloured plaster. So 
quiet was the house that it seemed as if the move- 
ment of life within had been suspended, and when 
at last the figure of Mrs. Brooke floated down the 
great staircase under the pallid light from the win- 
dow above, she appeared to him as the disembodied 
spirit of one of the historic belles who had tripped up 
and down in trailing brocades and satin shoes. In- 
stead of coming toward him, she completed her 
ghostly impression by vanishing suddenly into the 
gloom beyond the staircase, and a moment after- 
ward his knock was answered by a small, embarrassed 
darky in purple calico. Entering the dining- 
room by her invitation, he stumbled upon Beverly 
stretched fast asleep, and snoring slightly, upon a 
horsehair sofa, with the brown and white setter dozing 
on a mat at his feet. At the approach of footsteps, 
the dog, without lifting its head, began rapping the 
floor heavily with its tail, and aroused by the sound, 
Beverly opened one eye and struggled confusedly 
into an upright position. 

‘“‘T was entirely overcome by the heat,’’ he remarked 
apologetically, as he rose from the sofa and held out 
his hand, “but it is a pleasure to see you, Mr. Smith. 
I hope you did not find the sun oppressive on your 
drive out. Amelia, my dear,’’ he remarked cour- 
teously, as Mrs. Brooke entered in a freshly starched 
print gown, “I feel a return of that strange dizziness 
I spoke of, so if it will not inconvenience you, may 
I beg for another of your refreshing lemonades?”’ 


176 THE ANCIENT LAW 


Mrs. Brooke, who had just completed the hasty 
ironing of her dress, which she had put on while it 
was still warm, met his request withan amiable but 
exhausted smile. 

‘*Don’t you think six lemonades in one day too 
many?’ she asked anxiously, when she had shaken 
hands with Ordway. 

“But this strange dizziness, my dear? An iced 
drink, I find far more effective than a bandage.” 

“Very well, I’ll make it of course, if it gives you any 
relief,’’ replied his wife, wondering if she would be able 
to bake the bread by the time Beverly demanded 
supper. ‘“‘If you’ll come up stairs now, Mr. Smith,” 
she added, ‘‘ Malviny will show you to the blue room.” 

Malviny, who proved upon further acquaintance 
to be the eldest great-grandchild of Aunt Mehitable, 
descended like a hawk upon his waiting property, 
while Mrs. Brooke led the procession up the staircase 
to an apartment upon the second floor. 

The blue room, as he discovered presently, con- 
tained a few rather fine pieces of old mahogany, a 
grandfather’s chair, with a freshly laundered chintz 
cover, and a rag carpet made after the ‘‘log cabin” 
pattern. Of the colour from which it had taken its 
name, there was visible only a faded sampler worked 
elaborately in peacock blue worsteds, by one 
‘‘Margaret, aged nine.’? Beyond this the walls were 
bare of decoration, though an oblong streak upon 
the plaster suggested to Ordway that a family 
portrait had probably been removed in the hurried 
preparations for his arrival. 


A CHANGE OF LODGING 177 


After remarking that she hoped he would “ make 
himself quite at home,’’ Mrs. Brooke was glancing 
inquiringly about the room with her large, pale, 
rather prominent eyes, when a flash of purple in the 
doorway preceded the announcement that ‘‘Marse 
Beverly done turn right green wid de dizziness, en 
wus axin’ kinder faintlike fur his lemonade.” 

““My poor husband,” explained the exhausted 
wife, ‘‘contracted a chronic heart trouble in the 
War, and he suffers so patiently that at times we 
are in danger of forgetting it.” 

Pressing her aching head, she hurried downstairs 
to prepare Beverly’s drink, while Ordway, after 
closing the broken latch of the door, walked slowly 
up and down the large, cool, barely furnished room. 
After his cramped chamber at Mrs. Twine’s his eyes 
rested with contentment upon the high white ceiling 
overhead, and then descended leisurely to the stateiy 
bedstead, with its old French canopy above, and to 
the broad, red brick hearth freshly filled with odor- 
ous boughs of cedar. The cleanly quiet of the place 
restored to him at once the peace which he had 
missed in the last few days in Tappahannock, and his 
nerves, which had revolted from, Mrs. Twine’s scold- 
ing voice and slovenly table, became composed 
again in the ample space of these high white walls. 
Even ‘‘Margaret, aged nine,” delivered a soothing 
message to him in the faded blues of her crewel work. 

When he had unpacked his bag, he drew the chintz- 
covered chair to the window, and leaning his elbow 
on the sill, looked out gratefully upon the overgrown 


178 THE ANCIENT LAW 


lawn filled with sheepmint and clover. Though it 
was already twilight under the cedars, the lawn was 
still bright with sunshine, and beyond the dwindling 
clump of cabbage roses in the centre, he saw that the 
solitary cow had not yet finished her evening meal. 
As he watched her, his ears caught the sound of light 
footsteps on the porch below, and a moment after- 
ward, he saw Emily pass from the avenue to the edge 
of the lawn, where she called the cow by name in a 
caressing voice. Lifting her head, the animal started 
at a slow walk through the tangled weeds, stopping 
from time to time to bite a particularly tempting 
head of purple clover. As the setting sun was in 
Emily’s eyes, she raised her bared arm while she 
waited, to shield her forehead, and Ordway was 
struck afresh by the vigorous grace which showed itself 
in her slishtest movement. The blue cotton dress 
she wore, which had shrunk from repeated washings 
until it had grown scant in the waist and skirt, re- 
vealed the firm rounded curve of her bosom and her 
slender hips. Standing there in the faint sunshine 
against the blue-black cedars, he felt her charm in 
some mysterious way to be akin to the beauty of 
the hour and the scene. The sight of her blue gown 
was associated in his mind with a peculiar fresh- 
ness of feeling—an intensified enjoyment of life. 
When the cow reached her side, the girl turned 
back toward the barnyard, and the two passed out of 
sight together beyond the avenue. As he followed 
them with his gaze, Ordway had no longer any 
thought of Gus Wherry, or of his possible presence 


A CHANGE OF LODGING 179 


in Tappahannock upon the morrow. The evil 
association was withdrawn now from his conscious- 
ness, and in its place he found the tranquil pleasure 
which he had felt while he watched the sunshine upon 
the sheepmint and clover—a pleasure not unlike 
that he had experienced when Emily’s blue cotton 
dress was visible against the cedars. The faces of 
the men who had listened to him yesterday returned 
to his memory; and as he saw them again seated on 
the rude benches among the pines, his heart expanded 
in an emotion which was like the melting of his will 
into the Divine Will which contained and enveloped 
all. 

A knock at the door startled him back to his sur- 
roundings, and when he went to answer it, he found 
the small frightened servant standing outside, with an 
old serving tray clutched desperately to her bosom. 
From her excited stutter he gathered that supper 
awaited him upon the table, and descending hastily, 
he found the family already assembled in the dining- 
room. Beverly received him graciously, Emily 
quietly, and the children assured him enthusiastically 
that they were glad he had come to stay because now 
they might eat ham every night. When they had 
been properly suppressed by Emily, her brother 
took up the conversation which he carried on in a 
polite, rambling strain that produced upon Ordway 
the effect of a monologue delivered in sleep. 

““T hope the birds won’t annoy you at daybreak, 
Mr. Smith,’ he remarked, “the ivy at your windows 
harbours any number of wrens and sparrows.” 


180 THE ANCIENT LAW 


‘““Oh, I like them,” replied Ordway, “I’ve been 
sleeping under a tin roof in Tappahannock 
which no intelligent bird or human being would 
approach.” 

‘“‘T remember,’”’ said Mr. Beverly pensively, ‘that 
there was a tin roof on the hotel at Richmond I 
stayed at during the War when I first met my wife. 
Do you recall how very unpleasant that tin roof was, 
Amelia? Or were you too young at the time to 
notice it? You couldn’t have been more than fifteen, 
I suppose? Yes, you must have been sixteen, be- 
eause I remember when I marched past the door 
with my regiment, I noticed you standing on the 
balcony, in a long white dress, and you couldn’t have 
worn long dresses before you were sixteen.” 

Mrs. Brooke glanced up calmly from the coffee-pot. 

“The roof was slate,’’ she remarked with the rigid 
adherence to a single idea, which characterised her 
devoted temperament. 

““Ah, to be sure, it was slate,’’ admitted Beverly, 
turning his genial face upon Ordway, ‘‘and I remem- 
ber now it wasn’t the roof that was unpleasant, but 
the food—the food was very unpleasant indeed, was 
it not, Amelia?” 

‘““T don’t think we ever got enough of it to test its 
quality,’’ replied Mrs. Brooke, ‘“‘poor mama was. so 
reduced at the end of a month that she had to take 
up three inches of her bodice.”’ 

“It’s quite clear to me now,’ observed Beverly, 
delightedly, “‘it was not that the food was unpleasant, 
but that it was scarce—very scarce.” 


9? 


” 


A CHANGE OF LODGING 181 


He had finished his supper; and when he had risen 
from the table with his last amiable words, he pro- 
ceeded to install himself, without apparent selection, 
into the only comfortable chair which the room con- 
tained. Drawing out his pipe a moment afterward, 
he waved Ordway, with a hospitable gesture, to a 
stiff wooden seat, and invited him in a persuasive 
tone, to join him in a smoke. 

‘““My tobacco is open to you,” he observed, ‘‘but I 
regret to say that I am unable to offer you a cigar. 
Yet a cigar, I maintain, is the only form in which 
a gentleman should use tobacco.” 

Ordway took out the leather case he carried and 
offered it to him with a smile. 

‘“‘Y’m afraid they are not all that they might be,”’ 
he remarked, as Beverly supplied himself with a 
murmured word of thanks. 

Mrs. Brooke brought out her darning, and Emily, 
after disappearing into the pantry, sent back the 
small servant for the dishes. The girl did not return 
again before Ordway took his candle from the mantel- 
piece and went upstairs; and he remembered after 
he had reached his bedroom that she had spoken 
hardly two words during the entire evening. Had‘ 
she any objection, he asked himself now, to his 
presence in the household? Was it possible, indeed, 
that Mrs. Brooke should have taken him in against 
her sister-in-law’s inclination, or even without her 
knowledge? In the supposition there was not only 
embarrassment, but a sympathetic resentment; and 
he resolved that if such proved to be the case, he was 


182 THE ANCIENT LAW 


in honour bound to return immediately to Tappa- 
hannock. Then he remembered the stifling little 
room under the tin roof with a feeling of thankful- 
ness for at least this one night’s escape. 

Awaking at dawn he lay for a while contentedly 
listening to the flutter of the sparrows in the ivy, and 
watching the paling arch of the sky beyond the 
pointed tops of the cedars. A great peace seemed 
to encompass him at the moment, and he thought 
with gratitude of the quiet evening he had spent with 
Beverly. It was dull enough probably, when one 
came to think of it, yet the simple talk, the measured 
courtesies, returned to him now as a part of the 
pleasant homeliness of his surroundings. The soft 
starlight on the sheepmint and clover, the chirp of the 
small insects in the trees, the refreshing moisture which 
had crept toward him with the rising dew, the good- 
night kisses of the children, delivered under protest 
and beneath Mrs. Brooke’s eyes—all these trivial 
recollections were attended in his thoughts by a 
train of pensive and soothing associations. 

Across the hall he heard the soft opening and 
closing of a door, and immediately afterward the 
sound of rapid footsteps growing fainter as they 
descended the staircase. Already the room was full 
of a pale golden light, and as he could not sleep 
again because of the broken shutter to the window 
which gave on the lawn, he rose and dressed himself 
with an eagerness which recalled the early morning 
risings of his childhood. A little later when he went 
downstairs, he found that the front door was still 


A CHANGE OF LODGING 183 


barred, and removing the heavy iron fastenings, he 
descended the steps into the avenue, where the faint 
sunbeams had not yet penetrated the thick screen of 
boughs. Remembering the garden, while he stood 
watching the sunrise from the steps, he turned 
presently into the little footpath which led 
by the house, and pushing aside the _ lilacs, 
from which the blossoms had all dropped, he 
leaned on the swinging gate before the beds he 
had spaded on those enchanted nights. Now the 
rank weeds were almost strangling the plants, and 
it occurred to him that there was still work 
ready for his hand in the Brooke’s garden. 
He was telling himself that he would begin 
clearing the smothered rows as soon as his morning 
at the warehouse was over, when the old hound ran 
suddenly up to him, and turning quickly he saw 
Emily coming from the springhouse with a print of 
golden butter in her hand. 

‘So it was you I heard stirring before sunrise!” 
he exclaimed impulsively, as his eyes rested on her 
radiant face, over which the early mist had scattered 
a pearly dew like the fragrant moisture upon a rose. 

‘““Yes, it was I. At four o’clock I remembered 
there was no butter for breakfast, so I got up and 
betook myself to the churn.” 

‘And this is the result?’ he asked, glancing down 
at the delicious creamy mould she had just worked 
into shape and crowned with a printed garland of 
thistles. “‘It makes me hungry enough for my 
muffins upon the minute.” 


184 THE ANCIENT LAW 


““You shall have them shortly,’”’ she said, smiling, 
““but do you prefer pop-overs or plain?”’ 

He met the question with serious consideration. 

“Well, if the choice is mine I think I'll have pop- 
overs,” he replied. 

Before his unbroken gravity her quick humour 
rippled forth. 

“Then I must run to Aunt Mehitable,’’ she 
responded merrily, “for I suspect that she has al- 
ready made them plain.’ 

With a laughing nod she turned from him, and 
following the little path entered the house under the 
honeysuckle arbour on the back porch. 


CHAPTER IV 


Suows THAT A LAUGH Dogs Not HEAL 
A HEARTACHE 


WueENn Emily entered the dining-room, she found 
that Beverly had departed from his usual custom 
sufficiently to appear in time for breakfast. 

“T hardly got a wink of sleep last night, my dear,” 
he remarked, ‘‘and I think it was due entirely to the 
heavy supper you insisted upon giving us.” 

“But, Beverly, we must have hot things now,” 
said Emily, as she arranged the crocheted centre- 
piece upon the table. ‘Mr. Smith is our boarder, 
you know, not our guest.” 

“The fact that he is a boarder,’? commented 
Beverly, with dignity, “entirely relieves me of any 
feeling of responsibility upon his account. If he 
were an invited guest in the house, I should feel as 
you do that hot suppers are a necessity, but when 
a man pays for the meals he eats, we are no longer 
under an obligation to consider his preferences.”’ 

“His presence in *the household is a _ great 
trial to us all,’ observed his wife, whose atti- 
tude of general acceptance was modified by the 
fact that she accepted everything for the worst. 
Her sense of tragic values had been long since obliter- 
ated by a gray wash of melancholy that. covered all. . 

185 


186 THE ANCIENT LAW 


“Well, I don’t see that he is very zealous about 
interfering with us,’’ remarked Emily, almost indig- 
nantly, “‘he doesn’t appear to be of a particularly 
sociable disposition.” 

“Yes, I agree with you that he is unusually depress- 
ing,’’ rejoined Mrs. Brooke. ‘It’s a pity, perhaps, 
that we couldn’t have secured a blond person—they 
are said to be of a more sanguine temperament, and 
I remember that the blond boarder at Miss Jennie 
Colton’s, when I called there once, was exceedingly 
lively and entertaining. But it’s too late, of course, 
to give advice now; I can only hope and pray that his 
morals, at least, are above reproach.” 

As the entire arrangement with Baxter had been 
made by Mrs. Brooke herself upon the day that 
Wilson, the grocer, had sent in his bill for the fifth 
time, Emily felt that an impatient rejoinder tripped 
lightly upon her tongue; but restraining her words 
with an effort, she observed cheerfully an instant later 
that she hoped Mr. Smith would cause no inconven- 
ience to the family. 

‘‘ Well, he seems to be a respectable enough person,”’ 
admitted Beverly, in his gracious manner, ‘‘but, of 
course, if he were to become offensively presuming 
it would be a very simple matter to drop him a 
hint.”’ 

“Tt reminds me of a case I read of in the newspaper 

a few weeks ago,’’ said Mrs. Brooke, ‘‘where a family 
in Roanoke took a stranger to board ‘with them and 
shortly afterward were all poisoned by a powder 
in the soup. No, they weren’t all poisoned,’’ she 


f 


A LAUGH DOES NOT HEAL 187 


corrected herself thoughtfully, ‘‘for I am positive 
now that the boarder was the only one who died. It 
was the cook who put the poison into the soup and 
the boarder who ate all of it. I remember the 
Coroner remarked at the inquest that he had saved 
the lives.of the entire family.” 

‘All the same I hope Mr. Smith won't eat all the 
soup,’ observed Emily. 

“It terrifies me at times,’ murmured Amelia, ‘‘to 
think of the awful power that we place so carelessly 
in the hands of cooks.” 

‘“‘In that case, my dear, it might be quite a safe- 
guard always to have a boarder at the table,’ sug- 
gested Beverly, with his undaunted optimism. 

‘‘But surely, Amelia,’’ laughed Emily, ‘you can’t 
suppose that after she has lived in the family for 
seventy years, Aunt Mehitable would yield at last to 
a passing temptation to destroy us?”’ 

“‘I imagine the poor boarder suspected nothing 
while he ate his soup,’’ returned Mrs. Brooke. ‘No, 
I repeat that in cases like that no one is safe, and the 
only sensible attitude is to be prepared for anything.” 

“Well, if I’m to be poisoned, I think I’d prefer to 
take it without preparation,” rejoined Emily. ‘*‘There 
is Mr. Smith now in the hall, so we may as well send 
Malviny to bring in breakfast.” 

When Ordway entered an instant later with his 
hearty greeting, even Mrs. Brooke unbent a trifle 
from her rigid melancholy and joined affably in the 
conversation. By a curious emotional paradox she 
was able to enjoy him only as an affliction; and his 


188 THE ANCIENT LAW 


presence in the house had served as an excuse for 
a continuous parade of martyrdom. From the hour 
of his arrival, she had been perfectly convinced not 
only that he interfered with her customary peace of 
mind, but that he prevented her as surely from 
receiving her supply of hot water upon rising and her 
ordinary amount of food at dinner. 

But as the days went by he fell so easily into his 
place in the family circle that they forgot at last to 
remark either his presence or his personal peculiarities. 
After dinner he would play his game of dominoes with 
Beverly in the breezy hall, until the sunlight began 
to slant across the cedars, when he would go out into 
the garden and weed the overgrown rows. Emily had 
seen him but seldom alone during the first few weeks 
of his stay, though she had found a peculiar pleasure 
in rendering him the small domestic services of which 
he was quite unconscious. Howshould he imagine 
that it was her hand that arranged the flowers upon 
his bureau, that placed his favourite chair near the 
window, and that smoothed the old-fashioned dimity 
coverlet upon his bed. Still less would he have 
suspected that the elaborate rag carpet upon his 
floor ‘was one which she had contributed to his com- 
fort from her own room. Had he known these things 
he would probably have been melancholy enough 
to have proved congenial company even to Mrs. 
Brooke, though, in reality, there was, perhaps, 
nothing he could have offered Emily which would 
have exceeded the pleasure she now found in these 
simple services. Ignorant as she was in all worldly 


A LAUGH DOES NOT HEAL 189 


matters, in grasping this essential truth, she had 
stumbled unawares upon the pure philosophy of 
leve—whose satisfaction lies, after ail, not in posses- 
sion, but in surrender. 

She was still absorbed in the wonder of this dis- 
covery, when going out into the garden one afternoon 
to gather tomatoes for a salad, she found him working 
among the tall, green corn at the end of the long 
walk. As he turned toward her in the late sunshine, 
which slanted across the waving yellow tassels, she 
noticed that there was the same eager, youthful look 
in his face that she had seen on the night when she 
had come down to find him spading by the moon- 
beams. 

In response to her smile he came out from among 
the corn, and went with her down the narrow space 
which separated two overgrown hills of tomato 
plants. He wore no coat and his striped cotton 
shirt was open at the throat and wrists. 

“It’s delicious in the corn now,” he said; ‘‘I can 
almost fancy that I hear the light rustle along the 
leaves.” 

“You love the country so much that you ought 
to have been a farmer,” she returned, “then you 
might have raised tobacco.” 

“That reminds me that I worked yesterday in 
your brother’s crop—but it’s too sticky for me. I 
like the garden better.” 

“Then you ought to have a garden of your own. 
Is all your chopping and your digging merely for the 
promotion of the general good?”’ 


190 THE ANCIENT LAW 


‘““Isn’t it better so?’’ he asked, smiling, ‘‘partic- 
ularly when I share in the results as I shall in this 
case? Who knows but that I shall eat this wonderful 
tomato to-night at supper?”’ 

She took it from his hand and placed it on the 
lettuce leaves in the bottom of the basket upon her 
arm. 

‘“You make a careful choice, I see,’’ she observed, 
“it is a particularly fine one.”’ 

‘“‘I suppose your philosophy would insist that after 
plucking it I should demand the eating of it also?’’ 

“TI don’t know about my philosophy—I haven’t 
any—but my common, sense would.” 

‘I’m not sure,’’ he returned half seriously, ‘‘ that 
I have much opinion of common, sense.” 

“But you would have,’’ she commented gravely, 
‘“‘if you had happened to be born with Beverly for a 
brother. I used to think that all men were alike,” 
she added, ‘“‘but you don’t remind me of Beverly in 
the very least.” | 

As she spoke she turned her face slightly toward 
him, and still leaning over the luxuriant tomato 
row, looked up at him joyously with her sparkling 
eyes. Her breath came quickly and he saw her 
bosom rise and fall under the scant bodice of her blue 
cotton gown. Almost unconsciously he had drifted 
into an association with her which constituted for 
him the principal charm of his summer at Cedar 
Hill. 

‘‘On the other hand I’ve discovered many points 
of resemblance,” he retorted in his whimsical tone. 


A LAUGH DOES NOT HEAL Igr 


“Well, you’re both easy to live in the house with, 
I admit that.” | 

““And we’re both perfectly amiable as long as 
everybody agrees with us and nobody crosses us,’’ 
he added. 

“I shouldn’t like to cross you,” she said, laughing, 
“but then why should I? Isn’t it very pleasant 
as it is now?”’ 

“Yes, it is very pleasant as it is now,” he repeated. 
slowly. 

Turning away from her he stood looking in silence 
over the tall cornto the amber light that fellbeyondthe 
clear outline of a distant hill. The association was, 
as she had just said, very pleasant in his thoughts, 
and the temptation he felt now was to drift on with 
the summer, leaving events to shape themselves as 
they would in the future. What harm, he demanded, 
could come of any relation so healthful, so simple 
as this? 

““T used to make dolls of ears of corn when I was 
little,’’ said Emily, laughing; ‘‘they were che only 
ones I had except those Beverly carved for me out 
of hickory nuts. ‘The one with yellow tasseis I named 
Princess Goldylocks until she began to turn brown 
and then I called her Princess Fadeaway.”’ 

At her voice, which sounded as girlish in his 
imagination as the voice of Alice when he had last 
heard it, he started and looked quickly back from 
the sunset into her face. ; 

‘““Has it ever occurred to you,” he asked, “Show 
little—how very little you know of me? By you I 


192 THE ANCIENT LAW 


mean all of you, especially your brother and Mrs. 
Brooke.” 

Her glowing face questioned him for a moment. . 

‘‘But what is knowledge,’ she demanded, “‘if it 
isn’t just feeling, after ali?”’ 

‘“‘T wonder why under heaven you took me in?”’ 
he went on, leaving her words unanswered. 

Had Mrs. Brooke stood in Emily’s place, she would 
probably have replied quite effectively, ‘‘ because 
the grocer’s bill had come for the fifth time’’; but the 
girl had learned to wear her sincerity in a less con- 
spicuous fashion, so she responded to his question | 
merely by a polite evasion. 

‘““We have certainly had no cause to regret it,”’ 
was what she said. 

““What I wanted to say to you in the beginning 
and couldn’t, was just this,’’ he resumed, choosing 
his words with a deliberation which sounded strained 
and unnatural, ‘‘I suppose it can’t make any differ- 
ence to you—it doesn’t really concern you, of course— 
that’s ‘what I felt—but,’’ he hesitated an instant 
and then went on more rapidly, ‘‘my daughter’s 
birthday is to-day. She is fifteen years old and 
it is seven years since I saw her.” 

‘‘Seven years?’’ repeated Emily, as she bent over 
and carefully selected a ripe tomato. : 

‘Doubtless I shouldn’t know her if I were to pass 
her in the street,’’ he pursued, aftera minute. ‘But 
it’s worse than that and it’s harder—for it’s as many 
years since I saw my wife.” 

She had not lifted her head from the basket, and 


A LAUGH DOES NOT HEAL 193 


he felt suddenly that her stillness was not the stillness 
of flesh, but of marble. 

‘Perhaps I ought to have told you all this be- 
fore,’ he went on again, “‘perhaps it wasn’t fair to 
let you take me in in ignorance of this and of much 
else?’’ 

Raising her head, she stood looking into his face 
with her kind, brown eyes. 

‘‘But how could these things possibly affect us?’’ 
she asked, smiling slightly. 

“No,” he replied slowly, ‘‘they didn’t affect you, 
of course—they don’t now. It made no difference 
to any of you, I thought. How could it make any?” 

‘‘No, it makes no difference to any of us,’’ she 
repeated quietly. 

“‘Then, perhaps, I’ve been wrong in telling you 
teis to-day?” 

She shook her head. ‘‘Not in telling me, but,” 
she drew a long breath, “‘it might be as well not 
to speak of it to Beverly or Amelia—at least 
for a while.” 

“You mean they would regret their kindness?”’ 

“It would make them uncomfortable—they are 
very old-fashioned in their views. I don’t know just 
how to put it, but it seems to them—oh, a terrible 
thing for a husband and wife to live apart.”’ 

‘“‘Well, I shan’t speak of it, of course—but would 
it not be better for me to return immediately to 
Tappahanneck?”’ 

For an instant she hesitated. ‘‘It would be very 
dreadful at Mrs. Twine’s.”’ 


194 THE ANCIENT LAW 


“TI know it,’’ he answered, ‘‘but I’m ready to go 
back, this minute if you should prefer it.” 

‘“But I shouldn’t,” she rejoined in her energetic 
manner. ‘‘Why should I, indeed? It is much wiser 
for you to stay here until the end of the summer.”’ 

When she had finished he looked at her a moment 
without replying. The light had grown very faint 
and through the thin mist that floated up from the 
fields her features appeared drawn and pallid. 

‘“What I can’t make you understand is that even 
though it is all my fault—every bit my fault from the 
beginning—yet I have never really wanted to do 
evil in my heart. Though I’ve done wrong, I’ve 
always wanted to do right.” 

If she heard his words they made little impression 
upon her, for going out into the walk, she started, 
without speaking, in the direction of the house. Then, 
when she had moved a few steps from him, she 
stopped and looked back as if she had forgotten 
something that had been in her thoughts. 

“I meant to tell you that I hope—I pray it will 
come right again,’ she said. 

“IT thank you,’”’ he answered, and drew back into 
the corn so that she might go on alone. 

A moment later as Emily walked rapidly down 
the garden path, it seemed to her that the distance 
between the gate and the house covered an immeasur- 
able space. Her one hope was that she might go 
to her room for at least the single hour before 
supper, and that there, behind a locked door with 
her head buried in the pillows, she might shed 


A LAUGH DOES NOT HEAL 195 


the hot tears which she felt pressing against her 
eyelids. 

Entering the hall, she had started swiftly up the 
staircase, with the basket of tomatoes still on her 
arm, when Mrs. Brooke intercepted her by descending 
like a phantom from the darkened bend. 

“OQ Emily, I’ve been looking for you for twenty 
minutes,’ she cried in despairing tones. ‘‘The 
biscuits refused to rise and Aunt Mehitable is in a 
temper. Will you run straight out to the kitchen - 
and beat up a few quick muffins for supper.” 

Drawing back into the corner of the staircase, 
Emily glanced down upon the tomatoes lying in the 
bottom of the basket; then without raising her eyes 
she spoke in a voice which might have uttered appro- 
priately a lament upon the universal tragedy of her 
sex. 

“IT suppose I may as well make them plain?”’ 
she said. 


CHAPTER V 
TREATS OF A GREAT PASSION IN A SIMPLE SOUL 


For several weeks in August Ordway did not go 
into Tappahannock, and during his vacation from 
the warehouse he made himself useful in a number 
of small ways upon the farm. The lawn was trimmed, 
the broken fences mended, the garden kept clear of 
Wiregrass, and even Mrs. Brooke’s ‘‘rockery”’ of 
portulaca, with which she had decorated a mouldering 
stump, received a sufficient share of his attention 
to cause the withered plants to grow green again 
and blossom in profusion. When the long, hot days 
had drawn to a close, he would go out ‘with a watering- 
pot and sprinkle the beds of petunias and geraniums 
which Emily had planted in the bare spots beside 
the steps. 

“The truth is I was made for this sort of thing, 
you know,’’ he remarked to her one day. “If it went 
on forever I should never get bored or tired.’ 

Scmething candid and boyish in his tone caused 
her to look up at him quickly with a wondering glance. 
Since the confession of his marriage her manner to 
him had changed but little, yet she was aware, with 
a strange irritation against herself, that she never 
heard his voice or met his eyes without remembering 
instantly that he had a wife whom he had not seen 

196 


A GREAT PASSION IN A SIMPLE SOUL 197 


for seven years. The mystery of the estrangement 
was as great to her as it had ever been, for since that 
afternoon in the garden he had not referred again to 
the subject; and judging the marriage relation by 
the social code of Beverly and Amelia, she had 
surmised that some tremendous tragedy had been 
the prelude to a separation of somany years. As he 
lifted the watering-pot he had turned a little away 
from her, and while her eyes rested upon his thick 
dark hair, powdered heavily with gray above the 
temples, and upon the strong, sunburnt features of 
his profile, she asked herself in perplexity where that 
other woman ‘was and if it were possible that she 
had forsaken him? ‘‘I wonder what she is like and 
if she is pretty or plain?’’ she thought. ‘‘I almost 
hope she isn’t pretty, and yet it’s horrid of me and 
I wonder why I hope so? What can it matter since 
he hasn’t seen her for seven years, and if he ever sees 
her again, she will probably be no longer young. I 
suppose he isn’t young, and yet I’ve never thought 
so before and somehow it doesn’t seem to matter. 
No, I’m sure his wife is beautiful,’’ she reflected a 
moment later, as a punishment for her uncharitable 
beginning, ‘‘and she has fair hair, 1 hope, and a 
lovely white skin and hands that are always soft 
and delicate. Yes, that is how it is and I am very 
glad,”” she concluded resolutely. And it seemed to 
her that she could see distinctly this woman whom 
she had imagined and brought to life. 

“T can’t help believing that you would tire of it 
in time,’’ she said presently aloud. 


198 THE ANCIENT LAW 


“‘Do you tire of it?’’ he asked in a softened voice, 
turning his gaze upon her. 

“I?” she laughed, with a bitterness he hac never 
heard in her tone before, “‘oh, yes, but I suppose that 
doesn’t count in the long run. Did there ever live 
a woman who hasn’t felt at times like railing against 
the milk pans and denying the eternal necessity of 
ham and eggs?”’ 

Though she spoke quite seriously the simplicity 
of her generalisation brought a humorous light to his 
-eyes; and in his imagination he saw Lydia standing 
upon the white bearskin rug against the oval mirror 
and the gold-topped bottles upon her dressing-table. 

**Well, if I’d made as shining a success at my job 
as you have at yours, I think I’d be content,’”’ was 
all he said. 

She laughed merrily, and he saw that the natural 
sweetness of her temper was proof against idle imagin- 
ings or vain desires. 

“You think then that it is better to do a small 
thing well than a big thing badly?” she inquired. 

“But it isn’t a small thing,’’ he protested, ‘‘it’s 
a great big thing—it’s the very biggest thing of all.”’ 

A provoking smile quivered on her lips, and he 
saw the dimple come and go in her cheek. 

““T am glad at least that you like my ham and 
eggs,’’ she retorted mockingly. 

“‘T do,’’ he answered gravely, “I like your ham 
and eggs, but I admire your courage, also.”’ 

She shook her head. “It’s the cheapest of the 
virtues.” 


A GREAT PASSION IN A SIMPLE SOUL 199 


“‘Not your kind, my dear child—it’s the rarest 
and the costliest of achievements.” 

“Oh, I don’t know how serious you are,’’ she 
answered lightly, ‘but it’s a little like putting a man 
on a desert island and saying, ‘make your bed or lie 
on the rocks.’ He’s pretty apt to make his bed, 
isn’t he?”’ 

“Not in the least. He usually puts up a flag of 
distress and then sits down in the sand and looks out 
for a ship.”’ 

Her voice lost its merriment. ‘‘When my ship 
shows on the horizon, it will be time enough to hoist 
my flag.” 

A reply was on his lips, but before he could utter 
it, she had turned away and was moving rapidly 
across the lawn to the house. 

The next morning Ordway went into Tappahan- 
nock, not so much on account of the little business he 
found awaiting him at the warehouse, as urged by the 
necessity of supplying Beverly with cigars. To 
furnish Beverly three times a day with the kind of 
cigar he considered it ‘‘worth while for a gentleman to 
smoke’’—even though his choice fell, in Ordway’s 
opinion, upon a quite inferior brand—had become 
in the end a courtesy too extravagant for him to 
contemplate with serenity. Yet he knew that 
almost in spite of himself this tribute to Beverly was 
now an established fact, and that as long as he 
remained at Cedar Hill he would continue to supply 
with eagerness the smoke which Beverly would 
accept with affability. 


200 THE ANCIENT LAW 


The town was dull enough at mid August, he 
remembered from the blighting experience of last 
summer; and now, after a fierce drought which had 
swept the country, he saw the big, fan-shaped leaves 
on Mrs. Twine’s evening glory hanging like dusty 
rags along the tin root of the porch. Banks was 
away, Baxter was away, and the only acquaintance 
he greeted was Bill Twine, sitting half drunk, in his 
shirt sleeves and collarless, on the front steps. There 
was positive relief when, at the end of an hour, he 
retraced his steps, with Beverly’s cigars under his 
right arm. 

After this the summer declined slowly into autumn, 
and Ordway began to count the long goiden after- 
noons as they dropped one by one into his memory 
of Cedar Hiil. An appeal to Mrs. Brooke, whom he 
had quite wen over by his attentions to Beverly and 
the children, delayed his moving back into Tappahan- 
nock until the beginning of November, and he told 
himself with satisfaction that it would be possible 
to awake on frosty October mornings and look 
out upon the red and gold of the landscape. 

Late in September Banks returned from his vaca- 
tion, and during his first visit to Cedar Hill, he 
showed himself painfully nervous and ill at ease. 
But coming out for a walk with Ordway one after- 
noon, he suggested at the end of their first mile that 
they should sit down and have a smoke beneath a 
young cherry tree upon the roadside. As he lit his 
pipe he held the match in his hand until it burned 
his fingers; then throwing it into the grass, he turned 


A GREAT PASSION IN A SIMPLE SOUL 20: 


upon his companion as eloquently despairing a look 
as it is in the power of a set of naturally cheerful 
features to assume. 

““Smith,”’ he asked in a hollow voice, ‘‘do you sup- 
pose it’s really any worse to die by your own hand 
than by disease?”’ 

““By Jove!” exclaimed Ordway, and the moment 
afterward, ‘‘Come, now, out with it, Banks. How 
has she been behaving this time?”’ 

Banks lowered his voice, while he glanced sus- 
piciously up at the branches of the cherry tree he- 
neath which they sat. 

““Sne hates the sight of me,’’ he answered, with a 
groan. 

‘““Nonsense,’’ rejoined Ordway, cheerfully. ‘‘ Love 
has before new worn the mask of scorn.”’ 

“But it hasn’t worn the mask of boredom,” 
retorted the despairing Banks. 

For a minute his answer appeared final even to 
Ordway, who stared blankly over the ripened corn- 
field across the road, without, for the life of him, 
being able to frame a single encouraging sentence in 
reply. 

“Tf it’s the last word I speak,” pursued Banks, 
biting desperately at the stem of his pipe, ‘‘she cannot 
abide the sight of me.’ 

‘““But how does she show it?”’ demanded Ordway, 
relieved that he was not expected to combat the 
former irrefutable statement. 

“She tried to keep me away from the springs where 
she went, and when I would follow her, whether or 


202 : THE ANCIENT LAW 


no, she hardly opened her mouth to me for the first 
two days. Then if I asked her to go to walk she 
would say it was too hot for walking, and if I asked 
her to drive she’d answer that she didn’t drive with 
men. As if she and I hadn't been together in a 
dog-cart over every road within twenty miles of 
Tappahannock!”’ 

“But perhaps the custom of the place was 
different?” 

“‘No, sir, it was not custom that kept her,”’ replied 
Banks, in a bitterness that scorned deception, ‘‘for 
she went with others. It was the same thing about 
dancing, too, for if I asked her to dance, she would 
always declare that she didn’t have the strength to 
use her fan, and the minute after I went away, I’d 
see her floating round the ball-room in somebody 
else’s arms. Once I did get her to start, but she 
left off after the first round, because, she said, we 
could not keepin step. And yet [’d kept in step with 
her ever since we went on roller skates together.”’ 

He broke off for an instant, knocked the cold 
ashes out of his pipe, and plucking a long blade of 
grass, began chewing it nervously as he talked. 

‘‘And yet if you could only have seen her when she 
came down to the ball-room in her white organdie 
and blue ribbons,’ he exclaimed presently, in an 
agony of recollection. 

‘Well, I’m rather glad on the whole that I didn’t,” 
rejoined Ordway. 

“You’d have fallen in love with her if you had—- 
you couldn’t have helped it.” 


A GREAT PASSION IN A SIMPLE SOUL 203 


““Then, thank heaven, I escaped the test. It’s a 
pretty enough pickle as it is now.”’ 

“TI could have stood it all,” said Banks, ‘‘if it 
hadn’t been for the other man. She might have 
pulled every single strand of my hair out if she’d 
wanted to, and I’d have grit my teeth and pretended 
that I liked it. I didn’t care how badly she treated 
me. What hurt me was how well she treated the 
other man.” 

“Did she meet him for the first time last sum- 
mer?’’ asked Ordway. 

‘Oh no, she’s known him ever since she went 
North in the spring—but it’s worse now than it’s 
ever been and, upon my word, she doesn’t seem to 
have eyes or ears for anybody else.” 

“So you're positive she means to marry him?” 

“She swears she doesn’t—that it’s only fun, you 
know. But in my heart I believe it is as good as 
settled between them.” 

“Well, if she’s made up her mind to it, I don’t, 
for the life of me, see how you're going to stop her.” 
returned Ordway, smiling. 

“But a year ago she’d made up her mind to marry 
me,’ groaned Banks. 

“Tf she’s as variable as that, my dear boy, perhaps 
the wind will blow her heart back to you again.” 

““I don’t believe she’s got one,” rejoined Banks, 
with the merciless dissection of the pure passion; 
‘““T sometimes think that she hasn’t any more heart 
than—than—I don’t know what.” 

“In that case I’d drag myself together and let her 


204 THE ANCIENT LAW 


alone. I’d go back to my work and resolve never to 
give her another thought.” : 

““Then,’’ replied Banks, ‘‘ you might have all the 
good sense that there is in the business, but you 
wouldn’t be in love. Now I love her for what she is, 
and I don’t want her changed even if it would make 
her kinder. When she used to be sweet I thought 
sweetness the most fascinating thing on earth, and 
now that she bangs me, I’ve come to think that 
banging is.” 

““T begin to understand,” remarked Ordway, laugh- 
ing, ““why you are not what might be called a suc- 
cessful lover.” 

“It isn’t because I don’t know the way,” returned 
Banks gloomily, “it’s because I can’t practice it 
even after I’ve planned it out. Don’t | lie awake 
at night making up all sorts of speeches I’m going to 
say to her in the morning? Ch, I can be indifferent 
enough when I’m dressing before the mirror—lI’ve 
even put on a purple cravat because she hated it, 
but I’ve always taken it off again before I went down- 
stairs to breakfast. Then as soon as I lay my eyes 
upon her, I feel my heart begin to swell as if it would 
burst out of my waistcoat, and instead of the flippant 
speeches I’ve planned, I crawi and whimper just 
as I did the day before.” 

They were seated under a cherry tree by the side 
of the road which led to Tappahannock, and as 
Banks finished his confessions, a large, dust covered 
buggy was seen approaching them from the direction 
of the town. As Ordway recognised Baxter through 


A GREAT PASSION IN A SIMPLE SOUL 205 


the cloud of dust raised by the wheels, he waved his 
hat with a shout of welcome, and a minute later the 
buggy reached them and drew up in the patch of 
briars upon the roadside. 

“T was just on my way to see you, Smith,” said Bax- 
ter, as he let fall the reins and held out his great dirty 
hand, “but I’m too heavy to get out, and if I once 
sat down on the ground, I reckon it would take more 
than the whole of Tappahannock to pull me up again.”’ 

“Well, go ahead to Cedar Hill,’’ suggested Ordway, 
“and we'll follow you at a brisk walk.” 

‘““No, I won’t do that. I can say what I have got 
to say right here over the wheel, if you’ll stand awhile 
in the dust. Major Leary was in to see me again this 
morning, and the notion he’s got in his head now is 
that you’re the man to run for Mayor of Tappahan- 
nock,” 

“IT!” exclaimed Ordway, drawing back slightly as 
he spoke. ‘‘He forgets that I’m out of the question. 
I refuse, of course.’’ 

“Well, you see, he says you’re the only man we’ve 
got strong enough to defeat Jasper Trend—and he’s 
as sure as shot that you’d have something like a 
clean walk-over. He’s already drawn up a big red 
flag with ‘The People’s Candidate: Ten Command- 
ment Smith, ’uponit. I asked him why he wouldn’t 
put just plain ‘Daniel,’ but he said that little Biblical 
smack alone was worth as much as a bushel of votes 
to you. If you drew the line at ‘Ten Commandment’ 
he’s going to substitute ‘Daniel-in-the-Lions’-Den 
Smith’ or something of that kind.” 


206 THE ANCIENT LAW 


“Tell him to stop it,” broke in Ordway, with a 
smothered anger in his usually quiet voice, ‘‘he’s 
said nothing to me about it, and I decline it absolutely 
and without consideration!’’ 

“You mean you won’t run?” inquired Baxter, 
in astonishment. 

“IT mean I won’t run—I can’t run—put it any way 
you please.” 

“T thought you’d put your whole heart and soul 
into defeating Trend.” 

“T have, but not that way—where’s Trenton 
whom we’ve been talking of all summer?’’ 

“‘He’s out of it—consumption, the doctor says-— 
anyway he’s going South.” 

“Then there’s but one other man,” said Ordway, 
decisively, ‘“‘and that’s Baxter.” 

““Mer”’ said Baxter softly, ‘“‘you mean me, do 
you say?” His chuckle shook the buggy until it 
creaked upon its rusty wheels. ‘“‘I can’t,’ he added, 
with a burst of humour, ‘‘to tell the truth I’m 
afraid.” 

‘“‘Afraid?’’ repeated Ordway, “‘you’re afraid of 
Jasper Trend?’’ 

“No,” said Baxter, “it ain’t Jasper—it’s my wife.” 

He winked slowly as he caught Ordway’s eyes, 
and then picking up the reins, made a movement as 
if to turn back to Tappahannock. ‘“‘So you’re dead 
sure then that you can’t be talked over?”’ he asked. 

‘As sure as you are,’”’ returned Ordway promptly; 
then as the buggy started back in the direction from 
which it had come, he went over to Banks, who had 


A GREAT PASSION IN A SIMPLE SOUL 207 


risen to his feet and was leaning heavily against the 
cherry tree, with the long blade of grass still between 
his teeth. 

‘“What do you think of their wanting to make me 
Mayor, Banks?’’ he inquired, with a laugh. 

Banks started from his gloomy reverie. ‘‘ Mayor!" 
he exclaimed almost with animation. ‘* Why, they ’ve 
shown, jolly good sense, that ’s what I think!” 

“Well, you need n’t begin to get excited,” re- 
sponded Ordway, ‘‘for I didn’t accept,and youwon’t 
have to quarrel either with me or with Jasper Trend.” 

“There ’s one thing you may be sure of.” said 
Banks with energy, ‘‘and that is that I’d quarrel 
_ with Jasper every time.” 

“In spite of Milly?’ laughed Ordway. 

“In spite of Milly,” repeated Banks in an awed 
but determined voice; ‘‘she may manage my hair and 
my cravats and my life to come, but I’ll be darned if 
she’s going to manage my vote!”’ 

““All the same I’m glad you can honestly stick to 
Jasper,” said Ordway, ‘‘he counts on you now, 
does n’t he?” 

“‘Oh, I suppose so,” returned Banks, without 
enthusiasm; “‘at any rate, I think he ’d rather she ’d 
marry me than Brown.” 

There was a moment’s silence in which the name 
brought no association into Ordway’s corsciousness. 
Then in a single flashing instant the truth leaped 
upon him, and the cornfields across the road surged 
up to meet his eyes like the waves of a high sea. 

“Than whom?’’ he demanded in so loud a tone 


208 THE ANCIENT LAW 


that Banks fell back a step and looked at him with 
blinking eyelids. 

“Than marry whom?” asked Ordway for the 
second time, dropping his voice almost to a whisper 
before the blank surprise in the other’s face. 

“Oh, his name’s Brown—Horatio Brown—I 
thought I’d told you,’ answered Banks, and he 
added a moment later, ‘you ’ve met him, I believe.” 

““Yes,’’ said Ordway, with an effort, “he ’s the hand- 
some chap who came here last June, isn’t he?’’ 

“Oh, he’s handsome enough,” admitted Banks, 
and he groaned out presently. ‘‘You liked him, 
didn’t you?” 

Ordway smiled slightly as he met the desperation 
in. the other’s look. 

“Tt like him,” he answered quietly, ‘‘'as much as 
I like a toad.” 


CHAPTER VI 
In WuicuH Baxter Puiots 


WHEN Baxter reached the warehouse the following 
morning, he found Major Leary pacing restlessly 
back and forth under the brick archway, with the 
regular military step at which, during the four years’ 
war, he had marched into battle. 

‘*Come in, sir, come in and sit down,” said Baxter, 
leading the way into his office, and sweeping a pile 
of newspapers from an armchair with a hospitable 
gesture. 

‘“‘Have you seen Smith? and is he all right?’ 
were the Major’s first words, as he placed his hat 
upon the table and took a quick, impatient turn 
about the room before throwing himself into the 
chair which the other had emptied. He was a short, 
erect, nervous man, with a fiery face, a pair of small 
gray eyes, like steel points, and a long white mous- 
tache, discoloured where it overhung his mouth by 
the faint yellow stain of tobacco. 

‘‘Oh, I’ve see him,’’ answered Baxter in a soothing 
voice, ‘‘but he won’t run—there’s no use talking. 
He’s dead set against it.” 

‘“Won’t run?”’ cried the Major, furiously. ‘‘Non- 
sense, sir, he must run. There’s nohelp forit. Did 
you tell him that we ’d decided that he should run?” 


209 


210 THE ANCIENT LAW 


_ “JT told him,” returned Baxter, ‘‘but, somehow, 
it didn’t look as if he were impressed. He was so 
positive that he would not even let me put in a word 
more on the subject. ‘Are you dead sure, Smith?’ 
I said, and he answered, ‘I’m as dead sure as you 
are yourself, Baxter.’ ” 

The Major crossed his knees angrily, stretched him- 
self back in his chair, and began pulling nervously 
at the ends of his moustache. 

“Well, Il! have to see him myself,” he said author- 
itatively. 

““You may see him as much as you please,”’ re- 
plied Baxter, with a soft, offended dignity, ‘but I ’ll 
be mightily surprised, sir, if you get him to change his 
mind.” 

“Well, I reckon you’re right, Bob,’? admitted the 
other, after a moment’s reflection, ‘“‘what he won’t 
do for you, it isn’t likely that he ’ll do for the rest of 
Tappahannock—but the fact remains that somebody 
has got to step up and defeat Jasper Trend. Now 
I ask you pointblank—where ’Il you get your man?’’ 

““The Lord knows!” sighed Baxter, and he sucked 
hard at the stem of his pipe. 

“Then I tell you if you can’t make Smith come out, 
it’s your duty as an honest citizen to run yourself.” 

Baxter relapsed into a depressed silence, in the 
midst of which his thoughts were invaded not so 
much by the political necessity of the occasion as by 
the smali, but dominant figure of his wife. The big 
man, who had feared neither shot nor bayonet, trem- 
bled in spirit as he imagined the outraged authority 


IN WHICH BAXTER PLOTS 211 


that could express itself in a person that measured 
hardly a fraction more than five feet from her shoes 
to the curling gray fringe above her forehead. He 
remembered that once in the early daysof his marriage, 
he had allowed himself to be seduced by the promise 
of political honours, and that for a whole miserable 
month he had gone without griddle cakes and syrup 
for his breakfast. ‘‘No—no, I could never tell 
Marthy,” he thought, desperately, still seeing in 
imagination the pretty, indignant face of Mrs. 
Baxter. 

“It’s your duty as an honest citizen torun yourself,” 
repeated the Major, rapping the arm of his chair to 
enforce his ‘words. 

‘“‘I can’t,” rejoined Baxter, hopelessly, “‘I can’t 
sir,” and he added an instant afterward, ‘“‘you see 
women have got the idea somehow, that politics 
ain’t exactiy moral.” 

‘“Women!’’ said the Major, in the dry, contemptu- 
ous tone in which he might have uttered the word, 
““Pshaw!”’ 

“I don’t mean just “women,’”’ replied Baxter, 
“I mean my wife,”’ 

‘‘Oh!” said the Major, “‘you mean your wife 
would be opposed to the whole thing?”’ 

‘‘She would n’t hear of it, sir, she simply ‘would n’t 
hear a word of it.” 

For a long pause the Major made no answer; then 
rising from his chair he began pacing with his military 
stride up and down the floor of the little room. At 
the end of five minutes he turned upon Baxter with 


212 THE ANCIENT LAW 


an exclamation of triumph, and threw himself again 
into the armchair beside the desk. 

‘“‘T have it, Bob!’ he said, slapping his knee until 
the dust flew out of his striped trousers, ‘‘I knew I’d 
get it in the end and here it is. The very thing, on 
my word, sir, 1 ’ve discovered the very thing.”’ 

“Then I’m out of it,’? said Baxter, ‘‘an’ I’m 
mighty glad of that.” 

“Oh, no, you aren ’t out of it—not just yet,” said 
the Major, “‘we’re to start you in, Bob, you’re to 
start in as a candidate; and then a ‘week before the 
nomination, something ‘will crop up to make you fall 
out of the race, and you ’ll turn over all your votes to 
Smith. It would be too late, then, for him to back 
out—he ’d simply have to keep in to save the day.” 

In spite of the roar of delight with which the 
Major ended his speech, Baxter sat unconvinced and 
unmoved, shaking his great head in a voiceless pro- 
test against the plot. 

“It’s the only way, I tell you,” urged the Major, 
half pleased, half angry. “After Smith you ’re by 
long odds the most popular man in Tappahannock, 
and if itis n’t one of roth it’s Jasper Trend and Ae 
everlasting barrooms.”’ 

“‘But suppose Smith still declines,’ 
remembering his wife. 

“Oh, he won’t—he isn’t a blamed fool,” returned 
the Major, “and if he does,’”’ he added impressively, 
*‘if he does I swear to you I ’ll go into the racemyself.”’ 

He held out his hand and Baxter grasped it in 
token of good faith. 


said Hic 


IN WHICH BAXTER PLOTS 213 


“Then I ’ll do it,” said the big man, “ provided—” 
he hesitated, cleared his throat, and went on bravely, 
“provided there’s no objection to my telling my 
wife the scheme’—bending his ear an instant, he 
drew back with an embarrassed and guilty face, 
“that’s Smith’s step in the warehouse. He'll be in 
here in less than two minutes.” 

The Major took up his hat, and flung back the door 
with a hurried movement. 

“Well, good-bye, Ill see Smith later about the 
plans,”’ he returned, ‘‘and meanwhile, we ‘ll go hard 
to work to whip our friend Jasper.” 

Meeting Ordway an instant later upon the threshold, 
he passed him with a flourish of his hat, and marched 
rapidly under the brick archway out into the street. 

As his bookkeeper entered Baxter appeared to be 
absorbed in a newspaper which he had picked up 
hastily from the pile upon the floor. 

‘*Good-mr rning,” said Ordway, a little surprised; 
“tit looks as if I ’d put the fiery Major to flight.” 

“Smith,” said Baxter, dropping his paper, and 
lifting his big, simple face to the younger man, ‘‘ Smith, 
you ’ve got me into a hole, and I want you to pull 
me out again.”’ 

‘““A hole?”’ repeated Ordway; then as light broke 
on him, he laughed aloud and held out his hand. 
“Oh, I see, he’s going to make you Mayor of Tap- 
pahannock!” 

With a groan Baxter prodded fresh tobacco into 
his pipe, and applying a match, sat for several minutes 
brooding in silence amid the cloud of smoke. 


214 THE ANCIENT LAW 


“He says it’s got to be either you or me,” he pur- 
sued presently, Without noticing Ordway’s ejacula- 
tion, ‘and on my word, Smith, seeing I’ve got a 
wife who ‘s all against it, I think it would be but fair 
to me to let me off. You’re my friend now, ain’t 
you? Well, I’m asking you, Smith, as friend to, 
friend.” 

A flush passed slowly over Ordway’s face, and the 
unusual colour lent a peculiar animation to his glance. 
As Baxter met his eyes, he was conscious that they 
pierced through him, bright blue, sparkling, as 
incisive as a blade. 

“To tell the truth, the thing is all but impossible,” 
said Ordway, after a long pause. ‘‘ You don’t know, 
I suppose, that I’ve never even touched politics in 
Tappahannock.”’ 

“That ain’t the point, Smith—it ’s going on three 
years since you came here—am I right?”’ 

““Yes—three years next March, and it seems a 
century.” 

“Well, anyway, you ’ve as good a right as I to be 
Mayor, and a long sight better one than Jasper Trend 
has. Come, now, Smith, if you don’t get me out of 
this hole I’m in, heaven knows how I’m going to 
face the Major.” 

“‘Give me time,” said Ordway, quickly, “give me 
time—a week from to-morrow I am to make my 
first speech in the town hall. May I have till then?” 

“Till Thursday week? Oh, I say, Smith, you ’ve 
got to give in in the end—and a week sooner or later, 
what ’s the difference?” 


IN WHICH BAXTER PLOTS 215 


Without replying, Ordway walked slowly to the 
window and stood looking out upon the steep street 
that crawled up from the railroad track, where an 
engine whistled. He had held out till now, but with 
Baxter’s last words he had heard in his thoughts 
a question larger and older than any of which 
his employer had dreamed. ‘‘Why not?” he asked 
himself again as he looked out upon the sunshine. 
‘““Why should not Daniel Smith, for a good pur- 
pose, resume the rights which Daniel Ordway has 
forfeited?’’ And it appeared to him while he 
stood there that his decision involved not himself 
alone, and that the outcome had ceased to be 
merely an election to the highest office in 
Tappahannock. Infinitely deep and wide, the 
problem belonged not only to his individual life, 
but to the lives of all those who had sinned and paid 
the penalty. of sin and asked of humanity the right 
and the freedom to begin anew. The impulsive 
daring which he had almost lived down stirred for an 
instant in his pulses, and turning quickly he looked 
at Baxter with a boyish laugh. 

“Tf I go in, Baxter, I go in to win!’’ he cried. 

At the moment it had seemed to him that he was 
obliging rather than ambitious in the choice that he 
had made; but several days later, when he came out 
of the warehouse to find the Major’s red flag flying in 
the street, he felt the thrill of his youthful enthusiasm 
quicken in his blood. There was a strangely martial 
_ air about the red flag in the sunshine, and the response 
in his pulses was not unlike the ardour of battle. 


216 THE ANCIENT LAW 


“‘After all the world is no smaller here than it is 
in New York,’’ he thought, “only the littleness of 
the one is different from the littleness of the other. 
In either place success would have meant nothing 
in itself, but in Tappahannock I can be more that 
successful, I can be useful.” With the words it 
seemed to him that his heart dissolved in happiness, 
and as he looked now on the people who passed him 
in the street—on the old Negro midwife waddling 
down the board walk; on the Italian who kept a 
fruit stand at the corner; on the pretty girl flirting 
in the door of the harness shop; and on the rough- 
coated, soft-eyed country horses—he felt that one 
and all of these must recognise and respond to the 
goodwill that had overflowed his thoughts. So 
detached from personal bitterness, indeed, was even 
his fight against Jasper Trend that he went out of 
his way at the top of the hill to pick up a small whip 
which the Mayor had dropped from horseback as he 
rode by. The scowling thanks with which Jasper 
receive. the courtesy puzzled him for a moment 
until he remembered that by the man in the harness 
shop they were regarded probably as enemies. At 
the recollection he stopped: short in his walk and 
laughed aloud—no, he was not interested in fighting 
anything so small, so insignificant as Jasper Trend. 
It was the injustice, the social disease he combated 
and not the man. ‘I wonder if he really hates me?”’ 
he thought, for it seemed to him absurd and mean- 
ingless that one man should waste his strength in 
hating another. ‘“‘If he’d been five years in prison 


IN WHICH BAXTER PLOTS 217 


he would have learned how foolish it all is,’’ he added; 
and an instant afterward he asked himself almost 
with terror if his punishment had been, in reality, 
the greatest good that had come to him in life? 
Without that terrible atonement would he have gone 
on like Jasper Trend from fraud to fraud, from selfish- 
ness to damnation? 

Looking round him in the perfect October weather, 
he felt that the emotion in his heart swelled suddenly 
to rapture. Straight ahead the sunshine sifted in 
drops through the red and yellow trees that bordered 
the roadside, while in the field on his right the 
brown cornricks crowded in even rows to where the 
arch of the hill was outlined against the deep blue 
sky. Here was not only peace, but happiness, and 
his old life, as he glanced back upon it, appeared 
hollow, futile, a corpse without breath or animation. 
That was the mere outward form and body of exist- 
ence; but standing here in the deserted road, with 
his eyes on the brilliant October fields, he could 
tell himself that he had come at last into the ways 
and the understanding of faith. As he had once 
walked by sight alone and stumbled, so he moved 
now blindly like a child that is led step by step 
through the dark. 

From the road behind him a happy laugh struck 
on his ears, and turning quickly he saw that a dog- 
cart was rolling rapidly from Tappahannock. As 
he stepped back upon the roadside to avoid the dust 
raised by the wheels, he lifted his eyes to the face 
of Milly Trend, who sat, flushed and smiling, under 


218 THE ANCIENT LAW 


a pink sunshade. She bowed joyfully; and it was 
not until a moment afterward, when the cart had 
gone by, that Ordway realised, almost with the force 
of a blow struck unawares, that he had acknowledged 
the obsequious greeting of Gus Wherry. 

After the pink sunshade had vanished, Milly’s 
laugh was still blown back to him on the rising 
wind. With the happy sound of it in his ears, he 
watched the dust settle again in the road, the tall 
golden poplars close like a screen after the passing 
wheels, and the distance resume its aspect of 
radiant loneliness. Nothing was changed at which 
he looked, yet he was conscious that the rapture had 
passed from his thoughts and the beauty from the 
October landscape. The release that he had won 
appeared to him as an illusion and a cheat, and lifting 
his face to the sunshine, he watched, like a prisoner, 
the flight of the swallows across the sky. 

At dinner Beverly noticed his abstraction, and 
recommended a mint julep, which Emily went out 
immediately to prepare. 

“The blood is easily chilled at this season,’’ he 
said, ‘‘and care should be taken to keep it warm 
by means of a gentle stimulant. I am not a great 
drinker, sir, as you may have remarked, but in cases 
either of sickness or sorrow, I have observed that few 
things are more efficacious than a thimbleful of whis- 
key taken at the proper time. When I had the 
misfortune to break to my uncle Colonel Algernon 
Brooke the distressing news of the death of his wife 
by drowning, I remember that, though he was one 


IN WHICH BAXTER PLOTS 219 


of the most abstemious men alive, his first articulate 
words were: ‘bring the whiskey jug.’ ” 

Even with the cheering assistance of the mint 
julep, however, it was impossible for Ordway to eat 
his dinner; and making an excuse presently, he rose 
from the table and went out into the avenue, where 
he walked slowly up and down in the shadow 
of the cedars. At the end of his last restless turn, 
he went indoors for his hat, and coming out again 
started rapidly toward Tappahannock. With his 
first decisive step he felt that the larger share of his 
burden had fallen from him. 


The Tappahannock Hotel was a low, whitewashed 
frame building, withdrawn slightly from the street, 
where several dejected looking horses, with saddle- 
bags attached to them, were usually fastened to the 
iron rings in the hitching-rail upon the sidewalk. 
The place was the resort chiefly of commercial 
travellers or of neighbouring farmers, who drove in 
with wagon loads of garden produce or of sun-cured 
tobacco; and the number of loungers reclining on 
the newly painted green benches upon the porch 
made Ordway aware that the fall trade was already 
beginning to show signs of life. 

In answer to his questions, the proprietor an 
unctuous person, whose mouth was distorted by a 
professional habit of welcome—informed him that 
a gentleman by the name of Brown had registered 
there the evening before, and that he was, to the 


220 THE ANCIENT LAW 


best of his belief, upstairs in number eighteen at the 
present moment. 

“To teil the truth I can’t quite size him up,’”’ he 
concluded confidentially. ‘‘He don’t seem to hev’ 
come either to sell or to buy an’ thar’s precious little 
else that ever brings a body to Tappahannock.”’ 

‘Please add that I wish particularly to see him in 
private,”’ said Ordway. 

Without turning his head the proprietor beckoned, 
by a movement of his thumb delivered backward over 
his left shoulder, to a Negro boy, who sat surrepti- 
tiously eating peanuts out of a paper bag in his pocket. 

“Tell the gentleman in number eighteen, Sol, that 
Mr. Smith, the people’s candidate for Mayor, would 
like to have a little talk with him in private. I’m 
mighty glad to see you out in the race, suh,’’ he added, 
turning again to Ordway, as the Negro disappeared 
up the staircase. 

“Thank you,’ replied Ordway, with a start, which 
brought him back from his approaching interview 
with Gus Wherry to the recollection that he was 
fighting to become the Mayor of Tappahannock. 

“‘Thar’s obleeged to be a scrummage, I reckon,” 
resumed the loquacious little man, when he had 
received Ordway’s acknowledgments—‘‘but I s’pose 
thar ain’t any doubt as to who’ll come off with 
the scalps in the end.” His manner changed 
abruptly, and he looked round with a lurking 
curiosity in his watery eyes. You knew Mr. 
Brown, didn’t you say, suh?—before you came 
here?’’ 


IN WHICH BAXTER PLOTS 225 


Ordway glanced up quickly. 

‘Did you tell me he got here yesterday ?’’ he asked. 

‘Last night on the eight-forty-five, which came in 
two hours after time.” 

‘‘An accident on the road, was n’t it?’ 

‘“‘Wreck of a freight—now, Mr. Brown, as I was 
saying if 

At this instant, to Ordway’s relief, the messenger 
landed with a bound on the floor of the hall, and 
picking himself up, announced with a cheerful grin, 
that ‘‘the gentleman would be powerful pleased to 
see Mr. Smith upstairs in his room.”’ 

Nodding to the proprietor, Ordway followed the 
Negro up to the first landing, and knocked at a half 
open door at the end of the long, dark hall. 





CHAPTER VII 


SHows THaT Po.LitEeNEss, LIKE CHARITY, 
Is AN Exvastic MANTLE 


WHEN Ordway entered the room, he turned and 
closed the door carefully behind him, before he ad- 
vanced to where Wherry stood awaiting him with 
outstretched hand. 

“T can’t begin to tell you how I appreciate the 
honour, Mr. Smith. I didn’t expect it—upon my 
word, I didn’t,’ exclaimed Wherry, with the effusive 
amiability which made Ordway bite his lip in anger. 

‘IT don’t know that I mean it for an honour, but 
I hope we can get straight to business,’ returned 
Ordway shortly. 

““Ah, then there’s business?’’ repeated the other, 
as if in surprise. ‘‘I had hoped that you were pay- 
ing me merely a friendly call. To tell the truth I ’ve 
the very worst head in the world for business, you 
know, and I always manage to dodge it whenever 
I get half a chance.” 

“Well, you can’t dodge it this time, so We may as 
well have it out.” 

“Then since you insist upon that awful word 
‘business,’ I suppose you mean that you ’ve come 
formally to ratify the treaty?” asked Wherry, 
smiling. 

222 


POLITENESS IS AN ELASTIC MANTLE 223 


? 


“The treaty? I made no treaty,” returned Ord- 
way gravely. 

Laughing pleasantiy, Wherry invited his visitor 
to be seated. Then turning away for an instant, 
he flung himself into a chair beside a little marble 
topped table upon which stood a half-emptied bottle 
of rye whiskey and a pitcher of iced water on a 
metal tray. 

‘‘Do you mean to tell me you’ve forgotten our 
conversation in that beastly road?’’ he demanded, 
‘“‘and the prodigal? Surely you haven’t forgotten 
the prodigal? Why, I never heard anything in my 
life that impressed me more.”’ 

“You told me then distinctly that you had no 
intention of remaining in Tappahannock.”’ 

“T ll tell you so again if you ’’dliketohearit. Will 
you have a drink?”’ 

Ordway shook his head with an angry gesture. 

‘What I want to know,” he insisted bluntly, 
‘tis why you are here at all?’’ 

Wherry poured out a drink of whiskey, and adding 
a dash of iced water, tossed it down at a swallow. 

“T thought I told you then,’ he answered, ‘“‘that 
I have a little private business in the town. Asit’s 
purely personal I hope you ’ll have no objection to 
my transacting it. 

“You said that afternoon that your presence 
was, in some way, connected with Jasper Trend’s 
cotton mills.”’ 

Wherry gave a low whistle. ‘“‘Did I?” he asked 
politely, ‘‘well, perhaps, I did. 1 can’t remember.” 


224 THE ANCIENT LAW 


‘“‘IT was fool enough to believe that you wanted an 
honest job,’’ said Ordway; ‘‘it did not enter my 
head that your designs were upon Trend’s daughter.” 

““Didn ’t it? "inquired Wherry with a smile in 
which his white teeth flashed brilliantly. ‘‘ Well, 
it might have, for I was honest enough about it. 
Did n’t I tell you that a woman was at the bottom of 
every mess I was ever in?’”’ 

‘Where is your wife?’’ asked Ordway. 

‘‘Dead,”’ replied Wherry, in a solemn voice. 

“If I am not mistaken, you had not less than 
three at the time of your trial.” 

‘“‘All dead,”’ rejoined Wherry in the same solemn 
tone, while he drew out his pocket handkerchief and 
wiped his eyes with a flourish, ‘‘there ain't many 
men that have supported such a treble affliction on 
the same day.” 

““I may as well inform you that I don’t believe a 
word you utter.” 

“It’s true all the same. I ’ll take my oathon the 
biggest Bible you can find in town.” 

“Your oath? Pshaw!’ 

‘Well, I always said my word was better,” ob- 
served Wherry, without the slightest appearance of 
offence. He wore a pink shirt which set off his fine 
colouring to advantage, and as he turned aside to 
pour out a second drink of whiskey, Ordway noticed 
that gis fair hair was brushed carefully across the 
bald spot in the centre of his head. 

“Whether they are dead or alive,’’ responded Ord- 
way, ‘‘I want you to understand plainly that you are 


POLITENESS IS AN ELASTIC MANTLE 225 


to give up your designs upon Milly Trend or her 
money.” | 

**So you ’ve had your eye on her yourself?’ ex- 
claimed Wherry. ‘‘I declare I’m deuced sorry. 
Why, in thunder, didn’t you tell me so last June?” 

A mental nausea that was almost like a physical 
spasm seized Ordway suddenly, and crossing to the 
window, he stood looking through the half-closed 
shutters down into the street below, where a covered 
wagon rolled slowly downhill, the driver following 
on foot as he offered a bunch of fowls to the shop- 
keepers upon the sidewalk. Then the hot, stale, 
tobacco impregnated air came up to his nostrils, 
and he turned away with a sensation of disgust. 

“Tf you ’d only warned me in time—hang it—I ’d 
have cut out and given you the field,” declared Wherry 
in such apparent sincerity that Ordway resisted an 
impulse to kick him out into the hall. ‘‘That’s my 
way. I always like to play fair and square when I 
get the chance.” 

‘Well, you ’ve got the chance now, and what ’smore 
you ’ve got to make it good.” 

“And leave you the open?”’ 

‘‘And leave me Tappahannock—yes.”’ 

“TI don’t want Tappahannock. To tell the 
truth I’m not particularly struck by its attrac- 
tions.” 

“In that case you’ve no objection to leaving 
immediately, I suppose?’’ | 

“T’ve no objection on earth if you ’ll allow mea 
pretty woman to keep me company. I’m a deuced 


226 THE ANCIENT LAW 


lonely bird, and I can’t get on by myself—it ’s not in 
my nature.” 

Ordway placed his hand upon the table with a 
force which started the glasses rattling on the metal 
tray. 

“J repeat for the last time that you are to leave 
Milly Trend alone,” he said. ‘Do you understand 
me?” 

‘‘I’m not sure I do,” rejoined Wherry, still pleas- 
antly enough. ‘‘Would you mind saying that over 
again in a lower tone?” 

‘“What I want to make plain is that you are not to 
marry Milly Trend—or any other women in this 
town,”’ returned Ordway angrily. 

‘So there are others!’’ commented Wherry jauntily 
with his eye on the ceiling. 

The pose of his handsome head was so remarkably 
effective, that Ordway felt his rage increased by the 
mere external advantages of the man. 

‘‘What I intend you to do is to leave Tappahan- 
nock for good and all this very evening,’ he resumed, 
drawing a sharp breath. 

The words appeared to afford Wherry unspeakable 
amusement. 

‘“‘T can’t,”’ he responded, after a minute in which 
he had enjoyed his humour to the full, “the train 
leaves at seven-ten and I ’ve an engagement at eight 
o’clock.”’ 

‘“‘Vou ’ll break it, that’s all.’ 

‘‘ But it would n’t be polite—it ’s with a lady.” 

“Then I ’ll break it for you,” returned Ordway, 


POLITENESS IS AN ELASTIC MANTLE 227 


starting toward the door, ‘‘for I may presume, I sup- 
pose, that the lady is Miss Trend?” 

‘‘Oh, come back, Isay. Hang it all, don’t get into 
a fury,’’ protested Wherry, clutching the other by the 
arm, and closing the door which he had half opened. 
‘‘Here, hold on a minute and let’s talk things over 
quietly. I told you, didn’t I? that I wanted to be 
obliging.”’ 

“Then you will go?” asked Ordway, in a milder 
tone. 

“Well, I'll think about it. I’ve a quick enough 
wit for little things, but on serious matters my brain 
works slowly. In the first place now didn’t we 
promise each other that we’d play fair?” 

“But you haven’t—that’s why I came here.” 

““You’re dead wrong. I’m doing it this very 
minute. I'll keep my mouth shut about you till 
Judgment Day if you'll just hold off and not pull me 
back when I’m trying to live honest.”’ 

‘“‘Honest!’’ exclaimed Ordway, and turned on 
his heel. 

“Well, I’d like to know what you call it, for if it 
isn’t honesty, it certainly isn’t pleasure. My wife’s 
dead, I swear it’s a fact, and I swear again that I 
don’t mean the girl any harm. I was never so 
much gone on a woman in my life, though a 
number of ’em have been pretty soft on me. So 
you keep off and manage your election—or what- 
ever it is—while I go about my business. Great 
Scott! after all it ain’t as if a woman were a bank 
note, is it?” 


228 THE ANCIENT LAW 


“The first question was mine. Will you leave to- 
day or will you not?” 

‘And if I will not what are you going to do about 
it?” 

“‘As soon as I hear your decision, I shall let you 
know.”’ 

“Well, say I won’t. What is your next move 
then?” 

“In that case I shall go straight to the girl’s father 
after I leave this room.”’ 

“By Jove you will! And what will you do when 
you get there?”’ 

‘“‘T shall tell him that to the best of my belief you 
have a wife—possibly several—now living.”’ 

“Then you'll lie,’ said Wherry, dropping for the 
first time his persuasive tone. 

“That remains to be proved,’ rejoined Ordway 
shortly. ‘“‘At any rate if he needs to be convinced 
I shall tell him as much as I know about you.” 

‘““And how much,” demanded Wherry insolently, 
“does that happen to be?” 

‘“‘Enough to stop the marriage, that is all I want.” 

‘‘And suppose he asks you—as he probably will— 
how in the devil it came to be any business of yours?”’ 

For a moment Ordway looked over the whiskey 
bottle and through the open window into the street 
below. 

“T don’t think that will happen,” he answered 
slowly, ‘‘ but if it does I shall tell him the whole truth 
as I know it—about myself as well as about you.” 

“The deuce you will!” exclaimed Wherry. “It 


POLITENESS IS AN ELASTIC MANTLE 229 


appears that you want to take the whole job out of 
my hands now, doesn’t it?” . 

The flush from the whiskey had overspread his 
face, and in the midst of the general redness his eyes 
and teeth flashed brilliantly in an angry laugh. An 
imaginative sympathy for the man moved Ordway 
almost in spite of himself, and he wondered, in the 
long pause, what Wherry’s early life had been and if 
his chance in the world were really a fair one? 

“‘T don’t want to be hard on you,” said Ordway at 
last; ‘‘it’s out of the question that you should have 
Milly Trend, but if you'll give up that idea and go 
away I'll do what I can to help you—I’ll send you 
half my salary for the next six months until you 
are able to find a job.” 

Wherry looked at him with a deliberate wink. 

“So you'd like to save your own skin, after all, 
wouldn’t you?” he inquired. 

Taking up his hat from the table, Ordway turned 
toward the door and laid his hand upon the knob 
before he spoke. 

“‘Ts it decided then that I shall go to Jasper Trend?” 
he asked. 

“Well, I wouldn’t if I were you,” said Wherry, 
“but that’s your affair. On the whole I think that 
you'll pay more than your share of the price.”’ 

“Tt’s natural, I suppose, that you should want 
your revenge,” returned Ordway, without resentment, 
“but all the same I shall tell him as little as possible 
about your past. What I shall say is that I have 
reason to believe that your wife is still living.” 


230 THE ANCIENT LAW 


‘‘One or more?”’ enquired Wherry, with a sneer. 

“One, I think, will prove quite sufficient for my 
purpose.” 

“Well, go ahead,” rejoined Wherry, angrily, “but 
before you strike you’d better be pretty sure you see a 
snake in the grass. I’d advise you for your own sake 
to ask Milly Trend first if she expects to marry me.” 

“What?” cried Ordway, wheeling round, ‘‘do you 
mean she has refused you?”’ 

‘Oh, ask her—ask her,” retorted Wherry airily, 
as he turned back to the whiskey bottle. 

In the street, a moment later, Ordway passed under 
the red flag, which, infiated by the wind, swelled 
triumphantly above his head. From the opposite 
sidewalk a man spoke to him; and then, turning, 
waved his slouch hat enthusiastically toward the 
flag. ‘If he only knew,” thought Ordway, looking 
after him; and the words brought to his imagination 
what disgrace in Tappahannock would mean in his 
life. As he passed the dim vacancy of the warehouse 
he threw toward it a look which was almost one of 
entreaty. ‘No, no, it can’t be,”’ he insisted, as if to 
reassure himself, ‘it is impossible. How could it 
happen?’’? And seized by a sudden rage against 
circumstances, he remembered the windy afternoon 
upon which he had come for the first time to Tappa- 
hannock—the wide stretches of broomsedge; the 
pale red road, which appeared to lead nowhere; his 
violent hunger; and the Negro woman who had 
given him the cornbread at the door of her cabin. 
A hundred years seemed to have passed since then— 


POLITENESS IS AN ELASTIC MANTLE 231 


no, not a hundred years as men count them, but a 
dissolution and a resurrection. It was as if his 
personality—his whole inner structure had dissolved 
and renewed itself again; and when he thought now 
of that March afternoon it was with the visual dis- 
tinctness that belongs to an observer rather than to an 
actor. His point of view was detached, almost 
remote. He saw himself from the outside alone— 
his clothes, his face, even his gestures; and these 
thinge were as vivid to him as were the Negro cabin, 
the red clay road, and the covered wagon that threw 
its shadow on the path as it crawled by. Inno way 
could he associate his immediate personality either 
with the scene or with the man who had sat on the 
pine bench ravenously eating the coarse food. At 
the moment it seemed to him that he wasreleased, 
not only from any spiritual bondage to the past, but _ 
even from any physical connection with the man he 
had been then. ‘“‘ What have I to do with Gus Wherry 
or with Daniel Ordway?” he demanded. ‘Above 
all, what in heaven have I to do with Milly Trend?” 
As he asked the question he flushed with resentment 
against the girl for whom he was about to sacrifice 
all that he valued in his life. He thought with 
disgust of her vanity, her shallowness, her insincerity; 
and the course that he had planned showed in this 
sudden light as utterly unreasonable. It struck him 
on the instant that in going to Wherry he had been 
a fool. ‘Yes, I should have thought of that before. 
I have been too hasty, for what, after all, have I to 
do with Milly Trend?” 


232 THE ANCIENT LAW 


With an effort he put the question aside, and in 
the emotional reaction which followed, he felt that 
his spirit soared into the blue October sky. Emily, 
looking at him at dinner, thought that she had never 
seen him so animated, so light-hearted, so boyishly 
unreserved. When his game of dominoes with 
Beverly was over, he followed the children out into 
the orchard, where they were gathering apples into 
great straw hampers; and as he stood under the 
fragrant clustering boughs, with the childish laughter 
in his ears, he felt that his perplexities, his troubles, 
even his memories had dissolved and vanished into 
air. An irresponsible happiness swelled in his heart 
while he watched the golden orchard grass blown 
like a fringe upon the circular outline of the hill. 

But when night fell the joy of the sunshine went 
from him, and it was almost with a feeling of heaviness 
that he lit his lamp and sat down in the chintz- 
covered chair under the faded sampler worked by 
Margaret, aged nine. Without apparent cause or 
outward disturbance he had passed from the exhilara- 
tion of the afternoon into a pensive, almost a mel- 
ancholy mood. The past, which had been so remote 
for several hours, had leaped suddenly to life again— 
not only in his memory, but in every fibre of his body 
as well as in every breath he drew. ‘‘No, I cannot 
escape it, for is it not a part of me—it is I myself,”’ 
he thought; and he knew that he could no more free 
himself from his duty to Milly Trend than he could 
tear the knowledge of her existence from his brain. 
‘‘After all, it is not Milly Trend,’ he added, ‘“‘it 


POLITENESS IS AN ELASTIC MANTLE 233 


is something larger, stronger, far more vital than 
she.” | 

A big white moth flew in from the dusk, and flut- 
tered blindly in the circle of light which the lamp 
threw on the ceiling. He heard the soft whirring 
of its wings against the plaster, and gradually the 
sound entered into his thoughts and became a part 
of his reflections. ‘* Wiil the moth fall into the flame 
or will it escape?’’ he asked, feeling himself powerless 
to avert the creature’s fate. In some strange way 
his own destiny seemed to be whirling dizzily in that 
narrow circle of light; and in the pitiless illumination 
that surrounded it, he saw not only all that was passed, 
but all that was present as well as ail that was yet to 
come. At the same instant he saw his mother’s face 
as she lay dead with her look of joyous surprise frozen 
upon her lips; and the face of Lydia when she had 
lowered a black veil at their last parting; and the face 
of Alice, his-daughter; and of the girl downstairs 
as he had seen her through the gray twilight; and 
the face of the epileptic little preacher, who had 
preached in the prison chapel. And as these faces 
looked back at him he knew that the illumination 
in which his soul had struggled so blindly was the 
light of love. ‘‘Yes, it is love,” he thought ‘‘and 
that is the meaning of the circle of light into which 
I have come out of the darkness.”’ 

He looked up startled, for the white moth, after 
one last delirious whirl of ecstasy, had dropped 
from the ceiling into the flame of the lamp. 


CHAPTER VIII 
THE TURN OF THE WHEEL 


At EIGHT o’clock the next morning Ordway 
entered Jasper Trend’s gate, and,passed up the 
gravelled walk between borders of white and yellow 
chrysanthemums. In a ‘window on his right a canary 
was singing loudly in a gilt cage; and a moment later, 
the maid invited him into a room which seemed, as 
he entered it, to be filled with a jubilant burst of 
music. As he waited here for the man he had come 
to see, he felt that, in spite of his terrible purpose, he 
had found no place in Tappahannock so cheerful as 
this long room flooded with sunshine, in the midst 
of which the canary swung back and forth in his wire 
cage. The furniture was crude enough, the colours 
of the rugs were unharmonious, the imitation lace of 
the curtains was offensive to his eyes. Yet the room 
was made almost attractive by the large windows 
which gave on the piazza, the borders of chrysanthe- 
mums and the smoothly shaven plot of lawn. 

His back was turned toward the door when it 
opened and shut quickly,and Jasper Trend came in, 
hastily swallowing his last mouthful of breakfast. 

‘*You wanted to see me, Mr. Smith, I understand,” 
he said at once, showing in his manner a mixture of 
curiosity and resentment. It was evident at the first 

234 


THE TURN OF THE WHEEL 235 


glance that even in his own house he was unable to 
overcome the political antagonism of the man of 
little stature. The smallest social amenity he would 
probably have regarded as a kind of moral subterfuge. 

‘‘T must ask you to overlook the intimate nature of 
my question,’’ began Ordway, in a voice which was 
so repressed that it sounded dull and lifeless, ‘but 
I have heard that your daughter intends to marry 
Horatio Brown. Is this true?” 

At the words Jasper, who had prepared himself for 
a political onslaught, fell back a step or two and 
stood in the merciless sunlight, blinking at his ques- 
tioner with his little, watery, pale gray eyes. Each 
dull red vein in his long nose became suddenly 
prominent. 

‘Horatio Brown?” he repeated, ‘“‘why, I thought 
you’d come about nothing less than the nomination. 
What in the devil do you want anyway with Horatio 
Brown. Hecan’t vote in Tappahannock, can he?’”’ 

“‘T’ll answer that in time,’’ replied Ordway, ‘‘my 
motive is more serious than you can possibly realise— 
it is a question which involves your daughter’s 
happiness—perhaps her life.” 

‘‘Good Lord, is that so?’’ exclaimed Jasper, ‘I 
don’t reckon you’re sweet on her yourself, are you?”’ 

Ordway’s only reply was an impatient groan which 
sent the other stumbling back against a jar of gold- 
fish on the centre table. Though he had come fully 
prepared for the ultimate sacrifice, he was unable 
to control the repulsion aroused in him by the bleared 
eyes and sunken mouth of the man before him. 


236 _ THE ANCIENT LAW 


‘‘Well, if you ain’t,”” resumed Jasper presently, 
with a fresh outburst of hilarity, ‘‘you’re about the 
only male critter in Tappahannock that don’t turn 
_ his eyes sooner or later toward my door.”’ 

‘“‘T’ve barely a speaking acquaintance with your 
daughter,” returned Ordway shortly, ‘‘but her 
reputation as a beauty is certainly very well deserved.”’ 

Mollified by the compliment, Jasper unbent so far as 
to make an abrupt, jerky motion in the direction of a 
chair; but shaking his head, Ordway put again bluntly 
the question he had asked upon the other’s entrance. 

‘‘Am I to understand seriously that she means 
to marry Brown?’”’ he demanded. 

Jasper twisted his scraggy neck nervously in his 
loose collar. ‘‘Lord, how you do hear things!’ he 
ejaculated. ‘‘Now, as far as I can see, thar ain’t 
a single word of truth in all that talk. Just between 
you and me I don’t believe my girl has had her mind 
on that fellow Brown more’n a minute. I’m dead 
against it and that’ll go a long way with her, you may 
be sure. Why, only this morning she told me that if 
she had to choose between the two of ’em, she’d stick 
to young Banks every time.” 

With the words it seemed to Ordway that the 
sunshine became fairly dazzling as it fell through 
the windows, while the song of the canary went up 
rapturously like apzan. Only by the relief which 
flooded his heart like warmth could he measure 
the extent of the ruin he had escaped. Even Jasper 
Trend’s face appeared no longer hideous to him, and 
as he held out his hand, the exhilaration of his release 





THE TURN OF THE WHEEL 239 


lent a note that was almost one of affection to his 
voice. 

‘“‘Don’t let her do it—for God’s sake don’t let her 
do it,’”’ he said, and an instant afterward he was 
out on the gravelled walk between the borders of 
white and yellow chrysanthemums. 

At the gate Milly was standing with a letter in her 
hand, and when he spoke to her, he watched her face 
change slowly to the colour of a flower. Never had 
she appeared softer, prettier, more enticing in his 
eyes, and he felt for the first time an understanding 
of the hopeless subjection of Banks. 

‘Oh, it’s you, Mr. Smith!”’ she exclaimed, smiling 
and blushing as she had smiled and blushed at Wherry 
the day before, ‘‘I was asking Harry Banks yesterday 
wnat had become of you?” 

‘“What had become of me?” he repeated in sur- 
prise, while he drew back quickly with his hand on 
the latch of the gate. 

“IT hadn’t seen you for so long,’ she answered, 
with a laugh which bore less relation to humour than 
it did to pleasure. ‘“‘ You used to pass by five times 
a day, and I got so accustomed to you that I really 
missed you when you went away.” 

‘Well, I’ve been in the country all summer, though 
that hardly counts, for you were out of town yourself.” 

‘Yes, I was out of town myself.’ She lingered 
over the words, and her voice softened as she went on 
until it seemed to flow with the sweetness of liquid 
honey, ‘‘but even when I am here, you never care 
to see me.”’ 


238 THE ANCIENT LAW 


““Do you think so?’’ he asked gaily, and the next 
instant he wondered why the question had passed his 
lips before it had entered into his thoughts, ‘‘the 
truth is that I know a good deal more about you than 
you suspect,’’ he added; “‘I have the honour, you see, 
to be the confidant of Harry Banks.” 

‘‘Oh, Harry Banks!”’ she exclaimed indifferently, 
as she turned from the gate, while Ordway opened 
it and passed out into the street. 

For the next day or two it seemed to him that the 
lightness of his heart was reflected in the faces of 
those about him—that Baxter, Mrs. Brooke, Emily, 
Beverly each appeared to move in response to some 
hidden spring within himself. He felt no longer 
either Beverly’s tediousness or Mrs. Brooke’s melan- 
choly, for these early October mornings contained 
a rapture which transfigured the people with whom 
he lived. 

With this unlooked for renewal of hope he threw 
himself eagerly into the political fight for the control 
of Tappanhannock. It was now Tuesday and on 
Thursday evening he was to deliver his first speech 
in the town hail. Already the preparations were 
made, already the flags were flying from the galleries, 
and already Baxter had been trimmed for his public 
appearance upon the platform. 

‘‘By George, I believe the Major’s right and it’s 
the Ten Commandment part that has done it,” said 
the big man, settling his person with a shake in the 
new clothes he had purchased for the occasion. ‘‘I 
reckon this coat’s all right, Smith, ain’t it? My 


THE TURN OF THE WHEEL 239 


wife wouldn’t let me come out on the platform in 
those old clothes I’ve been wearing.” 

‘‘Oh, you’re all right,” returned Ordway, cheer- 
fully—so cheerfully that Baxter was struck afresh 
by the peculiar charm which belonged less to manner 
than to temperament, ‘‘you’re all right, old man, 
but it isn’t your clothes that make you so.” 

“All the same I’ll feel better when I get into my 
old suit again,’’ said Baxter, ‘‘I don’t know how it is, 
but, somehow, I seem to have left two-thirds of 
myself behind in those old clothes. I just wore these 
down to show ’em off, but I shan’t put ’em on again 
till Thursday.” 

It was the closing hour at the warehouse, and after 
a few eager words on the subject of the approaching 
meeting, Ordway left the office and went out into the 
deserted building where the old Negro was sweeping 
the floor with his twig broom. A moment later he 
was about to pass under the archway, when 2 man, 
hurrying in from the street, ran straight into his 
arms and then staggered back with a laugh of mirth- 
less apology. 

““My God, Smith,” said the tragic voice of Banks, 
“I’m half crazy and I must have a word with you 
alone.”’ 

Catching his arm Ordway drew him into the dim 
light of the warehouse, until they reached the shelter 
of an old wagon standing unhitched against the wall. 
The only sound which came to them here was the 
scratching noise made by the twig broom on the 
rough planks of the floor. 


240 THE ANCIENT LAW 


‘“‘Speak now,” said Ordway. while his heart sank 
as he looked into the other’s face, ‘‘It’s quite safe— 
there’s no one about but old Abraham.” 

“‘T can’t speak,’’ returned Banks, preserving with 
an effort a decent composure of his features, “‘ but 
it’s all up with me—it’s worse than I imagined, and 
there’s nothing ahead of me but death.”’ 

‘“‘IT suppose it’s small consolation to be told that 
you look unusually healthy at the minute,” replied 
Ordway, ‘‘but don’t keep me guessing, Banks. 
What’s happened now?’”’ 

‘“All her indifference—all her pretence of flirting 
was pure deception,” groaned the miserable Banks, 
‘‘she wanted to throw dust, not only in my eyes, 
but in Jasper’s, also.” 

“Why, he told me with his own lips that his 
daughter had given him to understand that she 
preferred you to Brown.” 

‘‘And so she did give him to understand—so she 
did,’”’ affirmed Banks, in despair, ‘“‘but it was all a 
blind so that he wouldn’t make trouble between her 
and Brown. I tell you, Smith,’”’ he concluded, bring- 
ing his clenched fist down on the wheel of the wagon, 
from which a shower of dried mud was scattered into 
Ordway’s face, “‘I tell you, I don’t believe women 
think any more of telling a lie than we do of taking 
a cocktail!”’ 

‘“‘But how do you know all this, my dear fellow? 
and when did you discover it?’’ 

““That’s the awful part, I’m coming to it.”’ His 
voice gave out and he swallowed a lump in his throat 


THE TURN OF THE WHEEL 241 


before he could goon. ‘‘Oh, Smith, Smith, I declare, 
if it’s the last word I speak, I believe she means to 
run away with Brown this very evening!”’ 

““What?”’ cried Ordway, hardly raising his voice 
above a whisper. A burning resentment, almost a re- 
pulsion swept over him, and he felt that he could have 
spurned the girl’s silly beauty if she had lain at his feet. 
What was a woman like Milly Trend worth, that she 
should cost him, a stranger to her, so great a price? 

‘“‘Tell me all,” he said sharply, turning again to 
his companion. ‘‘How did you hear it? Why do 
you believe it? Have you spoken to Jasper?”’ 

Banks blinked hard for a minute, while a single 
large round teardrop trickled slowly down his freckled 
nose. 

“I should never have suspected it,’”’ he answered, 
“but for Milly’s old black Mammy Delphy, who has 
lived with her ever since she was born. Aunt Delphy 
came upon her this morning when she was packing 
her bag, and by hook or crook, heaven knows how, 
she managed to get at the truth. Then she came 
directly to me, for it seems that she hates Brown 
worse than the devil.” _ 

‘“When did she come to you?”’ 

‘“‘A half hour ago. I left her and rushed straight 
to you.” 

Ordway drew out his watch, and stood looking at 
the face of it with a wondering frown. 

“‘That must have been five o’clock,” he said, “‘and 
it is now half past. Shail I catch Milly, do you 
think, if I start at once?”’ 


242 THE ANCIENT LAW 


“You?” cried Banks, ‘“‘you mean that you will 
stop her?”’ 

‘‘IT mean that I must stop her. There is no 
question.”’ 

As he spoke he had started quickly down the 
warehouse, scattering as he walked, a pile of trash 
which the oid Negro had swept together in the centre 
of the floor. So rapid were the long strides with 
which he moved that Banks, in spite of his frantic 
haste, could barely keep in step with him as they 
passed into the street. Ordway’s face had changed 
as if from a spasm of physical pain, and as Banks 
looked at it in the afternoon light he was startled 
to find that it was the face of an old man. The 
brows were bent, the mouth drawn, the skin sallow, 
and the gray hair upon the temples had become 
suddenly more prominent than the dark locks above. 

“Then you knew Brown before?” asked Banks, 
with an accession of courage, as they slackened their 
pace with the beginning of the hill. 

‘“‘I knew him before—yes,”’ replied Ordway, shortly. 
His reserve had become not only a mask, but a coffin, 
and his companion had for 4 minute a sensation that 
was almost uncanny as he walked by his side—as if 
he were striving to keep pace uphill with a dead man. 
Banks had known him to be silent, gloomy, uncom- 
municative before now, but he had never until this 
instant seen that look of iron resolve which was too 
cold and still to approach the heat of passion. Had 
he been furious Banks might have shared his fury 
with him; had he shown bitterness of mood Banks 


THE TURN OF THE WHEEL 243 


might have been bitter also; had he given way even 
to sardonic merriment, Banks felt that it would have 
been possible to have feigned a mild hilarity of manner; 
but before this swift, implacable pursuit of something 
he could not comprehend, the wretched lover lost 
all consciousness of the part which he himself 
must act, well or ill, in the event to come. 

At Trend’s gate Ordway stopped and looked at his 
companion with a smile which appeared to throw 
an artificial light upon his drawn features. 

“Will you let me speak to her alone first,” he asked, 
“for a few minutes?” 

“T’ll take a turn up the street then,” returned 
Banks eagerly, still panting from his hurried walk 
up the long hill. ‘“She’s in the room on the right 
now,” he added, “‘I can see her feeding the canary.” 

Ordway nodded indifferently. ‘‘I shan’t be long,” 
he said, and going inside the gate, passed deliberately 
up the walk and into the rcom where Milly stood at 
the window with her mouth close against the wires 
of the gilt cage. 

At his step on the threshold the girl turned quickly 
toward the door with a fluttering movement. Sur- 
prise and disappointment battled for an instant in 
her glance, and he gathered from his first look that 
he had come at the moment when she was expecting 
Wherry. He noticed, too, that in spite of the mild 
autumn weather, she wore a dark dress which was not 
unsuitabie for a long journey, and that her sailor hat, 
from which a blue veil floated, lay on a chair in one 
corner. A deeper meaning had entered into the 


? 


244 THE ANCIENT LAW 


shallow prettiness of her face, and he felt that she 
had passed through some subtle change in which she 
had left her girlhood behind her. For the first time 
it occurred to him that Milly Trend was deserving not 
only of passion, but of sympathy. 

At the withdrawal of the lips that had offered him 
his bit of cake, the canary fluttered from his perch 
and uttered a sweet, short, questioning note; and in 
Milly’s face, as she came forward, there was some- 
thing of this birdlike, palpitating entreaty. 

“Oh, itis you, Mr. Smith,” she said, ‘‘I did not hear 
your ring.” 

“‘T didn’t ring,’’ responded Ordway, as he took her 
trembling outstretched hand in which she still held 
the bit of sponge cake, “I saw you at the window 
so I came straight in without sending word. What 
I have to say to you is so important that I dared not 
lose a minute.” 

‘“‘And it is about me?” asked Milly, with a quiver 
of her eyelids. 

“No, it is about someone else, though it concerns 
you in a measure. The thing I have to tell you 
relates directly to a man whom you know as Horatio 
Brown tf 

He spoke so quickly that the girl divined his mean- 
ing from his face rather than from his words. 

“Then you know him?” she questioned, in a 
frightened whisper. 

‘“‘T know more of his life than I can tell you. Itis 
sufficient to say that to the best of my belief he has 
a wife now living—that he has been married before 





THE TURN OF THE WHEEL 245 


this under different names to at least two living 
- women ae 

He stopped and put out his hand with an impulsive 
protecting gesture, for the wounded vanity in the 
girl’s face had pierced to his heart. ‘‘ Will you let 
me see your father?’’ he asked gently, ‘would it not 
be better for me to speak to him instead of to you?” 

“No, no!” cried Milly sharply, ‘don’t tell him— 
don’t dare to tell him—for he would believe it and it 
is a lie—it is alie! I tell you it is a lie!”’ 

‘“‘ As God is my witness it is the truth,”’ he answered, 
without resentment. 

“Then you shall accuse him to his face. He is 
coming in a little while, and you shall accuse him 
before me——”’ 

She stopped breathlessly and the pity in his look 
made her wince sharply and shrink away. With her 
movement the piece of sponge cake fell from her 
loosened fingers and rolled on the floor at her feet. 

“But if it were true how could you know it?’’ she 
demanded. ‘‘No, it is not true—I don’t believe it! 
I don’t believe it!” she repeated in a passion of 
terror. 

At her excited voice the canary, swinging on his 
perch, broke suddenly into an ecstasy of song, and 
Milly’s words, when she spoke again, were drowned 
in the liquid sweetness that flowed from the cage. 
For a minute Ordway stood in silence waiting for 
the music to end, while he watched the angry, helpless 
tremor of the girl’s outstretched hands. 

“Will you promise me to wait?’’ he asked, raising 





246 THE ANCIENT LAW 


his voice in the effort to be heard, ‘‘will you promise 
me to wait at least until you find out the truth or 
the falsehood of what I tell you?”’ 

“But I don’t believe it,’ repeated Milly in the 
stubborn misery of hopeless innocence. 

‘“‘Ask yourself, then, what possible reason I could 
have in coming te you—except to save you?”’ 

‘“Wait!’’ cried the girl angrily, “I can’t hear— 
wait!’’ Picking up a shawl from a chair, she flung 
it with an impatient gesture over the cage, and turn- 
ing immediately from the extinguished bird, took up 
his sentence where he had broken off. 

“‘To save me?” she repeated, ‘“‘you mean from 
marriage?’”’ 

“From a marriage that would be no marriage. 
Am I right in suspecting that you meant to go away 
with him to-night?’’ 

She bowed her head—all the violent spirit gone 
out of her. ‘“‘I was ready to go to-night,” she 
answered, like a child that has been hurt and is still 
afraid of what is to come. 

“‘And you promise me that you will give it up?” 
he went on gently. 

**I don’t know—I can’t tell—I must see him first,” 
she said, and burst suddenly into tears, hiding her 
face in her hands with a pathetic, shamed gesture. 

Turning away for a moment, he stood blankly 
staring down into the jar of goldfish. Then, as her 
sobs grew presently beyond her control, he came 
back to the chair into which she had dropped and 
looked with moist eyes at her bowed fair head. 


THE TURN OF THE WHEEL 247 


‘Before I leave you, will you promise me to give 
him up?—to forget him if it be possible?’’ he asked. 

‘“‘But it is not possible,’ she flashed back, lifting 
her wet blue eyes to his. ‘‘How dare you come to 
me with a tale like this? Oh, I hate you! I shall 
always hate you! Will you go?” : 

Before her helpless fury he felt a compassion 
stronger even than the emotion her tears had aroused. 

‘It is not fair that I should tell you so much and 
not tell you all, Milly,’’ he said. ‘‘It is not fair that 
in accusing the man you iove, I should still try to 
shield myself. I know that these things are true 
because Brown’s—Wherry is his name—trial took 
place immediately before mine—and we saw each 
other during the terms which we served in prison.” 

Then before she could move or speak he turned from 
her and went rapidly from the house and. out into 
the walk. 


CHAPTER IX 
AT THE CROSS-ROADS 


AT THE corner he looked down the street and saw 
the red flag still swelling in the wind. A man spoke 
to him; the face was familiar, but he could not recall 
the name, until after a few congratulatory words about 
his political prospects, he remembered, with a start, 
that he was talking to Major Leary. 

‘You may count on a clean sweep of votes, Mr. 
Smith—there’s no doubt of it,” said the Major, 
beaming with his amiable fiery face. 

‘““There’s no doubt of it?’’ repeated Ordway, while 
he regarded the enthusiastic politician with a per- 
plexed and troubled look. The Major, the political 
campaign, the waving red flag and the noisy little 
town had receded to a blank distance from the moment 
in which he stood. He wondered vaguely what con- 
nection he—Daniel Ordway—had ever held with 
these things? 

Yet his smile was still bright and cheerful as he 
turned away, with an apologetic word, and passed on 
into the road to Cedar Hill. The impulse which had 
driven him breathlessly into Milly’s presence had 
yielded now to the mere dull apathy of indifference, 
and it mattered to him no longer whether the girl 
was saved or lost in the end. He thought of her 

248 ; 


AT THE CROSS-ROADS 249 


vanity, of her trivial pink and white prettiness with 
a return of his old irritation. Well, he had done his 
part—his temperament had ruled him at the decisive 
instant, and the ensuing consequences of his confes- 
sion had ceased now to affect or even to interest 
him. Then, with something like a pang of thought, 
he remembered that he had with his own hand burned 
his bridges behind him, and that there was no way 
out for him except the straight way which led over 
the body of Daniel Smith. His existence in Tap- 
pahannock was now finished; his victory had ended 
in flight; and there was nothing ahead of him ex- 
cept the new beginning and the old ending. A 
fresh start and then what? And afterward the few 
years of quiet again and at the end the expected, 
the inevitable recurrence of the disgrace which he 
had begun to recognise as some impersonal natural 
law that followed upon his footsteps. As the future 
gradually unrolled itself in his imagination, he felt 
that his heart sickened in the clutch of the terror 
that had sprung upon him. Was there to be no 
end anywhere? Could no piace, no name even 
afford hima permanent shelter? Looking ahead 
now he saw himself as an old man wandering from 
refuge to refuge, pursued always by the resur- 
rected corpse of his old life, which though it contained 
neither his spirit nor his will, still triumphed by the 
awful semblance it bore his outward body. Was he 
to be always alone? Was there no spot in his 
future where he could possess himself in reality of 
the freedom which was his in name? 


250 THE ANCIENT LAW 


Without seeing, without hearing, he went almost 
deliriously where his road led him, for the terror in 
his thought had become a living presence before which 
his spirit rather than his body moved. He walked 
rapidly, yet it seemed to him that his feet were inert 
and lifeless weights which were dragged forward by the 
invincible torrent of his will. In the swiftness of his 
flight, he felt that he was a conscious soul chained to 
a body that was a corpse. 

When he came at last to the place where the two 
roads crossed before the ruined gate, he stopped 
short, while the tumult died gradually in his brain, 
and the agony through which he had just passed 
appeared as a frenzy to his saner judgment. Looking 
up amoment later as he was about to enter the avenue, 
he saw that Emily Brooke was walking toward him 
under the heavy shadow of the cedars. In the first 
movement of her surprise the mask which she had 
always worn in his presence dropped from her face, 
and as she stepped from the gloom into the sunlight, 
he felt that the sweetness of her look bent over him 
like protecting ‘wings. For a single instant, as her 
eyes gazed ‘wide open into his, he saw reflected in 
them the visions from which his soul had shrunk 
back formerly abashed. Nothing had changed in 
her since yesterday; she was outwardly the same 
brave and simple woman, with her radiant smile, 
her blown hair, and her roughened hands. Yet 
because of that revealing look she appeared no lon- 
ger human in his eyes, but something almost 
unearthly bright and distant, like the sunshine he 





AT THE CROSS-ROADS 251 


had followed so often through the bars of his 
prison cell. 

‘‘You are suffering,” she said, when he would have 
passed on, and he felt that she had divined without 
words all that he could not utter. 

‘‘Don’t pity me,’’ he answered, smiling at her 
question, because to smile had become for him the 
easier part of habit, ‘‘I’m not above liking pity, but 
it isn’t exactly what I need. And besides, I told you 
once, you know, that whatever happened to me would 
always be the outcome of my own failure.’ 

“Yes, I remember you told me so—but does that 
make it any easier to bear?” 

‘‘Easier to bear?—no, but I don’t think the chief 
end of things is to be easy, do you?”’ 

She shook her head. ‘“‘ But isn’t our chief end just 
to make them easier for others?’’ she asked. 

The pity in her face was like an illumination, and 
her features were enkindled with a beauty he had 
never found in them before. It was the elemental 
motherhood in her nature that he had touched; and 
he felt as he watched her that this ecstasy of tender- 
ness swelled in her bosom and overflowed her lips. 
Confession to her would have been for him the 
supreme luxury of despair; but because his heart 
strained toward her, he drew back and turned his 
eyes to the road, which stretched solitary and dim 
beyond them. 

“Well, I suppose, I’ve got what I deserved,” he 
said, ‘‘the price that a man pays for being a fool, he 
pays but once and that is his whole life long.”’ 


252 THE ANCIENT LAW 


“But it ought not to be so—it is not just,’’ she 
answered. 

““Just?’’ he repeated, bitterly, ‘‘no, I dare say, it 
isn’t—but the facts of life don’t trouble themselves 
about justice, do they? Is it just, for instance, that 
you should slave your youth away on your brother’s 
farm, while he sits and plays dominoes on the porch? 
Is it just that with the instinct for luxury in your 
blood you should be condemned to a poverty so 
terrible as this?’’ He reached out and touched the 
little red hand hanging at her side. ‘‘Is this just?’ 
he questioned with an ironical smile. 

‘‘T here is some reason for it,’’ she answered bravely, 
“‘T feel it though I cannot see it.” 

“Some reason—yes, but that reason is not justice 
—not the little human justice that we can call by the 
name. It’s something infinitely bigger than any 
idea that we have known.” 

“T can trust,” she said softly, ‘‘but I can’t reason.” 

‘‘Don’t reason—don’t even attempt to—let God 
run his world. Do you think if we didn’t believe in 
the meaning—in the purpose of it all that you and 
I could stand together here like this? It’s because 
we believe that we can be happy even while we suffer.”’ 

“Then you will be happy again—to-morrow?’”’ 

“Surely. Perhaps to-night—who knows? I’ve 
had a shock. My brain is whirling and I can’t see 
straight. In a little while it will be over and I shall 
steady down.” 

‘But I should like to help you now while it lasts,” 
she said. 








AT THE CROSS-ROADS 253, 


“You are helping me—it’s a mercy that you. 
stand there and listen to my wildtalk. Do you 
know I was telling myself as I came along the road. 
just now that there wasn’t a living soul to whom I 
should dare to say that I was in a quake of fear.”’ 

‘‘A quake of fear?’’ She looked at him with. 
swimming eyes, and by that look he saw that she 
loved him. If he had stretched out his arms, he 
knew that the passion of her sorrow would have swept 
her to his breast; and he felt that every fibre of his. 
starved soul and body cried out for the divine food 
that she offered. At the moment he did not stop 
to ask himself whether it was his flesh or his spirit. 
that hungered after her, for his whole being had dis- 
solved into the longing which drew him as with cords 
to her lips. All he understood at the instant was 
that in his terrible loneliness love had been offered 
him and he must refuse the gift. A thought passed 
like a drawn sword between them, and he saw in his 
imagination Lydia lowering her black veil at their 
last parting. 

‘“‘It’s a kind of cowardliness, I suppose,’’ he went 
on with his eyes on the ground, “but I was thinking 
that minute how greatly I needed help and how 
much—how very much—you had given me. If I 
ever learn really to live it will be because of you— 
because of your wonderful courage, your unfailing 
sweetness * 

For the first time he saw in her face the conscious- 
ness of her own unfulfilment. ‘“‘If you only knew 
how often I wonder if it is worth while,’’ she answered. 





254 THE ANCIENT LAW 


At this he made a sudden start forward and then 
checked himself. ‘‘The chief tragedy in my life,’ 
he said, ‘‘is that I knew you twenty years too late.” 

Until his words were uttered he did not realise 
how much cf a confession he had put into them; 
and with the discovery he watched her face bloom 
softly like a flower that opens its closed petals. 

‘If I could have helped you then, why cannot I 
help you now?”’ she asked, while the innocence in her 
look humbled him more than a divine fury would have 
done. The larger his ideal of her became, the keener 
grew his sense of failure—of bondage to that dead 
past from which he couid never release his living 
body. As he looked at her now he realised that the 
supreme thing he had missed in life was the control 
of the power which lies in simple goodness ; 
and the purity of Lydia appeared to him as a shining 
blank—an unwritten surface beside the passionate 
humanity in the heart of the girl before him. 

“Vou will hear things from others which I can’t 
tell you and then you will understand,” he said. 

‘‘T shall hear nothing that will make me cease to 
believe in you,’”’ she answered. 

‘Vou will hear that I have done wronginmy life and 
you will understand that if I have suffered it has 
been by my own fault.” 

She met his gaze without wavering. 

‘‘T shall still believe in you,”’ she responded. 

Her eyes were on his face and she saw that the wan 
light of the afterglow revealed the angularities of his 
brow and chin and filled in with shadows the deeper 


AT THE CROSS-ROADS 255 


hollows in his temples. The smile on his lips was 
almost ironical as he answered. 

‘““Those from whom I might have expected loyalty, 
fell away from me—my father, my wife, my chil- 
dren sh 

“To believe against belief is a woman’s virtue,” 
she responded, ‘‘but at least it is a virtue.”’ 

‘You mean that you would have been my friend 
through everything?’’ he asked quickly, half blinded 
by the ideal which seemed to flash so closely to his 
eyelids. 

There was scorn in her voice as she answered: ‘“‘If 
I had been your friend once—yes, a thousand times.”’ 

Before his inward vision there rose the conception 
of a love that would have pardoned, blessed and 
purified. Bending his head he kissed her little cold 
hand once and let it fail. Then without looking again 
into her face, he entered the avenue and went on alone. 





CHAPTER X 
BETWEEN MAN AND MAN 


WHEN he entered Tappahannock the following 
morning, he saw with surprise that the red flag was 
still flying above the street. As he looked into the 
face of the first man he met, he felt a sensation 
of relief, almost of gratitude because he received 
merely the usual morning greeting; and the instant 
afterward he flinched and hesitated before replying 
to the friendly nod of the harness-maker, stretching 
himself under the hanging bridles in the door of the 
little shop. 

Entering the warehouse he glanced nervously down 
the deserted building, and when a moment later 
he opened the door into Baxter’s office, he grew 
hot at the familiar sight of the local newspaper in 
his employer’s hands. The years had divided 
suddenly and he saw again the crowd in Fifth Avenue 
as he walked home on the morning of his arrest. He 
smelt the smoke of the great city; he heard the sharp 
street cries around him; and he pushed aside the 
fading violets offered him by the crippled flower 
seller at the corner. He even remembered, without 
effort, the particular bit of scandal retailed to him 
over a cigar by the club wit who had joined him. 
All his sensations to-day were what they had been 

256 


BETWEEN MAN AND MAN 257 


then, only now his consciousness was less acute, as 
if the edge of his perceptions had been blunted by 
the force of the former blow. 

“Howdy, Smith, is that you?” remarked Baxter, 
crushing the top of the paper beneath the weight of 
his chin as he looked over it at Ordway. ‘“Did> 
you meet Banks as you came in? He was in here 
asking for you not two minutes ago.” 

“Banks? No, I didn’t see him. What did he 
want?’’ As he put the ordinary question the dull 
level of his voice surprised him. 

“Oh, he didn’t tell me,’’ returned Baxter, ‘‘ but 
it was some love-lorn whining he had to do, I reckon. 
Now what I can’t understand is how a man can be 
so narrow sighted as only to see one woman out of 
the whole bouncing sex of ’em. It would take more 
than a refusal—it would take a downright football 
to knock out my heart. Good Lord! in this world 
of fine an’ middling fine women, the trouble ain’t 
to get the one you want, but to keep on wanting the 
one you get. I’ve done my little share of observing 
in my time, and what I’ve learned from it is that the 
biggest trial a man can have is not to want another 
man’s wife, but to want to want his own.”’ 

A knock at the door called Ordway out into the 
warehouse, where he yielded himself immediately to 
the persuasive voice of Banks. 

‘*Come back here a minute, will you, out of hear- 
ing? I tried to get to you last night and couldn’t.” 

‘“‘Has anything gone wrong?’’ inquired Ordway, 
following the other to a safe distance from Baxter’s 


Be 


ar 
ae 


¥ 
258 * THE ANCIENT LAW 


office. At first he had hardly had courage to lift 
his eyes to Banks’ face, but reassured by the quiet 
opening of the conversation, he stood now with 
his sad gaze fixed on the beaming freckled features 
of the melancholy lover. 

“IT only wanted to tell vou that she didn’t go,” 
whispered Banks, rolling his prominent eyes into the 
dusky recesses of the warehouse, ‘‘she’s ill in bed 
to-day, and Brown left town on the eight-forty-five 
this morning.” 

‘So he’s gone for good!’’ exclaimed Ordway, and 
drew a long breath as if he had been released from 
an emotional tension which had suspended, while it 
lasted, the ordinary movement of life. Since he had 
prepared himself for the worst was it possible that 
his terror of yesterday would scatter to-day like the 
delusions of an unsettled brain? Had Wherry held 
back in mercy or had Milly Trend? Even if he were 
spared now must he still live on here unaware how 
widely—or how pitifully—his secret was known? 
Would this ceaseless dread of discovery prove again, 
as it had proved in the past, more terrible even than 
the discovery itself? Would he be able to look fear- 
lessly at Miily Trend again?—at Baxter? at Banks? 
at Emily?” 

‘“‘Well, I’ve got to thank you for it, Smith?” said 
Banks. ‘‘How you stopped it, I don’t know for the 
life of me, but stop it you did.” 

The cheerful selfishness in such rejoicing struck 
Ordway even in the midst of his own bitter musing. 
Thougk Banks adored Milly, soul and body, he was 


BETWEEN MAN AND MAN 259 


frankly jubilant over the tragic ending of her short. 
romance. 

‘*T hope there’s little danger of its beginning anew,” 
Ordway remarked presently, with less sympathy 
than he would have shown his friend twelve hours 
before. 

“T suppose you wouldn’t like to tell me what you 
said to her?’’ inquired Banks, his customary awe 
of his comparion swept away in the momentary 
swing of his elation. 

‘No, I shouldn’t like to tell you,”’ returned Ordway 
quietly. 

“Then it’s all right, of course, and I'll be off to. 
drape the town hall in bunting for to-morrow night. 
We're going to make the biggest political display 
for you that Tappahannock has ever seen.” 

At the instant Ordway was hardly conscious of 
the immensity of his relief, but some hours 
later, after the early closing of the warehouse, 
when he walked slowly back along the road 
to Cedar Hill, it seemed to him that his life had 
settled again into its quiet monotonous spaces. The 
peaceful fields on either side, with their short crop 
of live-ever-lasting, in which a few lonely sheep were 
browsing, appeared to him now as a part of the 
inward breadth and calm of the years that he had 
spent in Tappahannock. 

In the loneliness of the road he could teil himself 
that the fear of Gus Wherry was gone for a time at 
least, yet the next day upon going into town he was 
aware of the same nervous shrinking from the people 


ibis THE ANCIENT LAW 


he passed, from the planters hanging about the 
warehouse, from Baxter buried behind his local 
newspaper. 

‘““They’ve got a piece as long as your arm about 
you in the Tappahannock Herald, Smith,’’ cried 
Baxter, chuckling; and Ordway felt himself redden 
painfully with apprehension. Not until the evening, 
when he came out upon the platform under the float- 
ing buntings in the town hall, did he regain entirely 
the self-possession which he had lost in the presence 
of Milly Trend. 

In its white and red decorations, with the extrava- 
gant glare of its gas-jets, the hall had assumed almost 
a festive appearance; and as Ordway glanced at the 
crowded benches and doorways, he forgot the trivial 
political purpose he was to serve, in the more human 
relation in which he stood to the men who had 
gathered to hear him speak. These men were his 
friends, and if they believed in him he felt a trium- 
phant conviction that they had seen their belief 
justified day by day, hour by hour, since he had come 
among them. In the crowd of faces before him, he 
recognised, here and there, workingmen whom he had 
helped—operatives in Jasper Trend’s cotton mills, 
or in the smaller factories which combined with the 
larger to create the political situation in Tappa- 
hannock. Closer at hand he saw the shining red 
face of Major Leary; the affectionate freckled face 
of Banks; the massive benevolent face of Baxter. 
As he looked at them an emotion which was almost 
one of love stirred in his breast, and he felt the words 


BETWEEN MAN AND MAN 261 


he had prepared dissolve and fade from his memory 
to reunite in an appeal of which he had not thought 
until this minute. There was something, he knew 
now, tor him to say to-night—something so infinitely 
large that he could utter it only because it rose like 
love or sorrow to his lips. Of all the solemn moments 
when he had stood before these men, with his 
open Bible, in the green field or in the little grove 
of pines, there was none so solemn, he felt, as the 
approaching instant in which he would speak to 
them no longer as a man to children, but as a man 
to men. 

On the stage before him Baxter was addressing 
the house, his soft, persuasive voice mingling with 
a sympathetic murmur from the floor. The applause 
which had broken out at Ordway’s entrance had not 
yet died away, and with each mention of his name, 
with each allusion to his services to Tappahannock, 
it burst forth again, enthusiastic, irrepressible, over- 
whelming. Never before, it seemed to him, sitting 
there on the platform with his roughened hands 
crossed on his knees, had he felt himself to be so 
intimately a part of the community in which he lived. 
Never before—not even when he had started this 
man in life, had bought off that one’s mortgage or 
had helped another to struggle free of drink, had 
he come quite so near to the pathetic individual lives 
that compose the mass. They loved him, they 
believed in him, and they were justified! At the 
moment it seemed to him nothing—less than nothing 
—that they should make him Mayor of Tappa- 


262 THE ANCIENT LAW 


hannock. In this one instant of understanding they 
had given him more than any office—than any 
honour. 

While he sat there outwardly so still, so confident 
of his success, it seemed to him that in the exhilara- 
tion of the hour he was possessed of a new and singu- 
larly penetrating insight into life. Not only did he 
see further and deeper than he had ever seen before, 
but he looked beyond the beginning of things into 
the causes and beyond the ending of them into the 
results. He saw himself and why he was himself as 
clearly as he saw his sin and why he had sinned. 
Out of their obscurity his father and his mother 
returned to him, and as he met the bitter 
ironical smile of the one and the curved black brows 
_and red, half open mouth of the other, he knew 
himself to be equally the child of each, for he under- 
stood at last why he was a mixture of strength and 
weakness, of gaiety and sadness, of bitterness and 
compassion. His short, troubled childhood rushed 
through his thoughts, and with that swiftness of 
memory which comes so often in tragic moments, 
he lived over again—not separately and in successive 
instants—but fully, vitally, and in all the freshness 
of experience, the three events which he saw now, 
in looking back, as the milestones upon his road. 
Again he saw his mother as she lay in her coffin, 
with her curved black brows and half open mouth 
frozen into a joyous look, and in that single 
fleeting instant he passed through his meeting with 
the convict at the wayside station, and through the long 


BETWEEN MAN AND MAN 263 


suspended minutes when he had waited in the Stock 
Exchange for the rise in the market which did 
not come. And these things appeared to him, not 
as detached and obscure remnants of his past, but 
clear and delicate and vivid as if they were projected 
in living colours against the illuminaticn of his mind. 
They were there not to bewilder, but to make plain; 
not to accuse, but to vindicate. ‘‘Everything is 
clear to me now and I see it all,’”’ he thought, “‘and if 
I can only keep this penetration of vision nothing 
will be harder to-morrow than it is to-night.”” In his 
whole life there was not an incident too small for him 
to remember it and to feel that it was significant of 
all the rest; and he knew that if he could have seen 
from the beginning as clearly as he saw to-night, his 
past would not have been merely different, it would 
have been entirely another than his own. 

Baxter had stopped, and turning with an embar- 
rassed upheaval of his whole body, he spoke to Ord- 
way, who rose at his words and came slowly forward 
te the centre of the stage. A hoarse murmur, 
followed by a tumult of shouts, greeted him, while 
he stood for a moment looking silently among those 
upturned faces for the faces of the men to whom he 
must speak. ‘‘That one will listen because I nursed 
him back to life, and that one because I brought him 
out of ruin—and that one and that one—’’ He 
knew them each by name, and as his gaze travelled 
from man to man he felt that he was seeking ‘a 
refuge from some impending evil in the shelter of 
the good deeds that he had done. 


264 THE ANCIENT LAW 


Though ne held a paper in his hand, he did not 
look at it, for he had found his words in that instant 
of illumination when, seated upon the stage, he had 
seen the meaning of his whole life made plain. The 
present event and the issue of it no longer concerned 
him; he had ceased to fear, even to shrink from 
the punishment that was yet to come. In the com- 
pleteness with which he yielded himself tothe moment, 
he ielt that he was possessed of the calm, clmost of 
the power of necessity; and he experienced suddeniy 
the sensation of being lifted and swept forward on. 
one of the high waves of life. He spoke rapidly, 
without effort, almost without consciousness of the 
words he uttered, until it seemed to him presently 
that it was the torrent of his speech which carried 
him outward and upward with that strange sense of 
lightness, of security. And this lightness, this security 
belonged not to him, but to some outside current 
of being. 


His speech was over, and he had spoken to these 
factory workers as no man had spoken before him in 
Tappahannock. With his last word the silence had 
held tight and strained for a minute, and then the 
grateful faces pressed round him and the ringing 
cheers passed through the open windows out 
into the street. His body was still trembling, 
but as he stood there with his sparkling blue eyes on 
the house, he looked gay and boyish. He had made 
kis mark, he had spoken his best speech, and he had 


BETWEEN MAN AND MAN 265 


touched not merely the factory toilers in Tappa- 
hannock, but that common pulse of feeling in which 
all humanity is made one. Then the next instant, 
while he still waited, he was aware of a new movement 
upon the platform behind him, and a man came 
forward and stopped short under the gas jet, which 
threw a flickering yellow light upon his face. Though 
he had seen him but once, he recognized him 
instantly as the short, long-nosed, irascible mana- 
ger of the cotton mills, and with the first glance 
into his face he had heard already the unspoken 
question and the reply. 

‘‘May I ask you, Mr. Smith,’ began the little 
man, suddenly, ‘‘if you can prove your right to vote 
or to hold office in Virginia?’”’ 

Ordway’s gaze passed beyond him to rest upon 
Baxter and Major Leary, who sat close together, 
genial, elated, rather thirsty. At the moment he 
felt sorry for Baxter—not for himself. 

‘‘No,’”’? he answered with a smile which threw a 
humorous light upon the question, “I cannot — 
can you prove yours?” 

The little man cleared his throat with a sniffling 
sound, and when he spoke again it was in a high 
nasal voice, as if he had become suddenly very 
excited or very angry. 

“Ts your name Daniel Smith?” he asked, with a 
short laugh. 

The question was out at last and the silence in 
which Ordway stood was like the suspension between 
thought and thought. All at once he found himself 


266 THE ANCIENT LAW 


wondering why he had lived in hourly terror of this 
instant, for now that it was upon him, he saw that 
it was no more tragic, no less commonplace, than the 
most ordinary instant of his life. As in the past his 
courage had revived in him with the first need of 
decisive action, so he felt it revive now, and lifting 
his head, he looked straight into the angry, little eyes 
of the man who waited, under the yellow gaslight, on 
the platform Ueto him. 

‘‘My name,” he answered, still smiling, ‘‘is Daniel 
Ordway.” 

There was no confusion in his mind, no anxiety, 
no resentment. Instead the wonderful brightness 
of a moment ago still shone in his thoughts, and 
while he appeared to rest his sparkling gaze on the 
face of his questioner, he was seeing, in reality, the 
road by which he had come to Tappahannock, and at 
the beginning of the road the prison, and beyond 
the prison the whole of his past life. 

‘‘Did you serve a term in prison before you came 
here?”’ 

me A. i 

‘“Were you tried and convicted in New York?” 

«e¢ Yes,”’ 

““Were you guilty?” 

Looking over the head of the little man, Ordway’s 
gaze travelled slowly across the upturned faces upon 
the floor of the house. Hardly a man passed under 
his look whom he had not assisted once at least in the 
hour of his need. ‘‘I saved that one from drink,” 
he thought almost joyfully, ‘‘that one from beggary— 


BETWEEN MAN AND MAN 267 


I stood side by side with that other in the hour of 
his shame U, 

‘““Were you guilty?’’ repeated the high nasal voice 
in his ear. 

His gaze came quickly back, and as it passed over 
the head of Baxter, he was conscious again of a throb 
of pity. 

“Yes,” he answered for the last time. Then, 
while the silence lasted, he turned from the platform 
and went out of the hall into the night. 





CHAPTER XI 
BETWEEN MAN AND WoMAN 


HE WALKED rapidly to the end of the street, and 
then slackened his pace almost unconsciously as he 
turned into the country road. The night had closed in 
a thick black curtain over the landscape, and the win- 
dows of the Negroes’ cabins burned like little still red 
flames along the horizon. Straight ahead the road was 
visible as a pale, curving streak across the darkness. 

A farmer, carrying a lantern, came down the path 
leading from the fields, and hearing Ordway’s foot- 
steps in the road, flashed the light suddenly into his 
face. Upon recognition there followed a cheerful 
“‘good-night!’’ and the offer of the use of the lantern 
to Cedar Hill. “It’s a black night and you'll 
likely have trouble in keeping straight. I’ve been 
to look after a sick cow, but I can feel my way up 
to the house in two minutes.”’ 

“Thank you,” returned Ordway, smiling as the 
light shone full in his face, ‘‘but my feet are accus- 
tomed to the road.” 

He passed on, while the farmer turned at the gate 
by the roadside, to shout cheerfully after him: 
“Well, good-night—Mayor!”’ 

The gate closed quickly, and the ray of the lantern 
darted like a pale yellow moth across the grass. 

268 


BETWEEN MAN AND WOMAN 269 


As Ordway went on it seemed to him that the dark- 
ness became tangible, enveloping—that he had to 
fight his way through it presently as through water. 
The little red flames danced along the horizon until 
he wondered if they were burning only in his imagina- 
tion. He felt tired and dazed as if his body had been 
beaten into insensibility, but the hour through which 
he had just passed appeared to have left merely a 
fading impression upon his brain. Not only had he 
ceased to care, he had ceased to think of it. When 
he tried now to recall the manager of the 
cotton mills, it was to remember, with aversion, his 
angry little eyes, his high nasal voice, and the wart 
upon the end of his long nose. At the instant these 
physical details were the only associations which the 
man’s name presented to his thoughts. The rest 
was something so insignificant that it had escaped 
his memory. He felt in a vague way that he 
was sorry for Baxter, yet this very feeling of sym- 
pathy bored and annoyed him. It was plainly 
ridiculous to be sorry for a person as rich, as fat, as 
well fed as his employer. Wherever he looked the 
little red flames flickered and waved in the fields, and 
when he lifted his eyes to the dark sky, he, saw 
them come and go in short, scintillant flashes, like 
fire struck from an anvil. They were in his brain, 
he supposed, after all, and so was this tangible 
darkness, and so, too, was this indescribable delicacy 
and lightness with which he moved. Everything 
was in his brain, even his ridiculous pity for 
Baxter and the angry-eyed little manager with 


270 THE ANCIENT LAW 


the wart on his long nose. He could see these 
things distinctly, though he had forgotten everything 
that had been so clear to him while he stood on the 
stage of the town hall. His past life and the prison 
and even the illumination in which he had remem- 
bered them so vividly were obscured now as if they, 
too, had been received into the tangible darkness. 

From the road behind him the sound of footsteps 
reached him suddenly, and he quickened his pace 
with an: impulse, rather than a determination of 
flight. But the faster he walked the faster came the 
even beat of the footsteps, now rising, now falling with 
a rhythmic regularity in the dust of the road. Once 
he glanced back, but he could see nothing because of 
the encompassing blackness, and in the instant of his 
delay it seemed to him that the pursuit gained 
steadily upon him, still moving with the regular 
muffled beat of the footsteps in the thick dust. A 
horror of recognition had come over him, and as he 
walked on breathlessly, now almost running, it 
occurred to him, like an inspiration, that he might 
drop aside into the fields and so let his pursuer pass 
onahead. The next instant he realised that the dark- 
ness could not conceal the abrupt pause of his flight— 
that as those approaching footsteps fell on his ears, 
so must the sound of his fall on the ears of the man 
behind him. Then a voice called his name, and he 
stopped short, and stood, trembling from head to 
foot, by the side of the road. 

“Smith!” cried the voice, “if it’s you, Smith, for 
God’s sake stop a minute!” 


BETWEEN MAN AND WOMAN 271 


‘Yes, it’s I,” he answered, waiting, and a moment 
afterward the hand of Banks reached out of the night 
and clasped his arm. 

‘Hold on,” said Banks, breathing hard, “I’m all 
blown.”’ 

His laboured breath came with a struggling violence 
that died gradually away, but while it lasted the 
strain of the meeting, the awkwardness of the emo- 
tional crisis, seemed suddenly put off —suspended. 
Now in the silence the tension became so. great 
that, drawing slightly away from the detaining 
hold, Ordway was about to resume his walk. At 
his first movement, however, Banks clung the more 
firmly to his arm. ‘Oh, damn it, Smith!” he burst 
out, and with the exclamation Ordway felt that the 
touch of flesh and blood had reached to the terrible 
loneliness in which he stood. In a single oath Banks 
had uttered the unutterable spirit of prayer. 

“You followed me?” asked Ordway quietly, while 
the illusions of the flight, the physical delicacy and 
lightness, the tangible darkness, the little red flames 
in the fields, departed from him. With the first hand 
that was laid on his own, his nature swung back into 
balance, and he felt that he possessed at the moment 
a sanity that was almost sublime. 

‘“As soon as I could get out I came. There was 
such a crush,’ said Banks, ‘I thought I’d catch up 
with you at once, but it was so black I couldn’t see 
my hand before me. In a little while I heard foot- 
steps, so I kept straight on.” 

“T wish you hadn’t, Banks.” 


272 THE ANCIENT LAW 


“But I had to.”” His usually cheerful voice sounded 
hoarse and throaty. “I ain’t much of a chap at 
words, Smith, you know that, but I want just to say 
that you’re the best friend I ever had, and I haven’t 
forgot it—I haven’t forgot it,’’ he repeated, and blew 
his nose. ‘‘ Nothing that that darn fool of a mana- 
ger said to-night can come between you and me,” 
he went on laboriously after a minute. ‘“‘If you 
ever want my help, by thunder, I'll go to hell and 
back again for you without a word.” 

Stretching out his free hand Ordway laid it upon 
his friend’s shoulder. 

“You're a first-rate chap, Banks,’’ he said cheer- 
fully, at which a loud sob burst from Banks, who 
sought to disguise it the instant afterward in a 
violent cough. 

““You’re a first-rate chap,” repeated Ordway gently, 
*‘and I’m glad, in spite of what I said, that you came 
after me just now. I’m going away to-morrow, you 
know, and it’s probable that I shan’t see you 
again.” 

“But won’t you stay on in Tappahannock? In 
two weeks all this will blow over and things will be 
just what they were before.”’ 

Ordway shook his head, a movement which Banks 
felt, though he did not see it. 

“No, I'll go away, it’s best,” he answered, and 
though his voice had dropped to a dull level there 
was still a cheerful sound to it, “I'll go away and 
begin again in a new place.”’ 

“Then I’ll go, too,’’ said Banks. 


BETWEEN MAN AND WOMAN 273 


‘““What! and leave Milly? No, you won’t come, 
Banks, you'll stay here.”’ 

“But DT’ll see you sometimes, shan’t I?” 

““Perhaps?—that’s likely, isn’t it?” 

“Yes, that’s likely,’ repeated Banks, and fell silent 
from sheer weight of sorrow. ‘‘At least you’ll let me 
go with you to the station?’ he said at last, after 
a long pause in which he had been visited by one of 
those acute flashes of sympathy which are to the 
heart what intuition is to the intellect. 

“Why, of course,’”’ responded Ordway, more 
touched by the simple request than he had been even 
by the greater loyalty. ‘‘ You may do that, Banks, 
and I’ll thank you for it. And now go back to 
Tappahannock,”’ he added, “‘I must take the mid- 
day train and there are a few preparations I’ve 
still to make.”’ 

‘But where will you go?’’ demanded Banks, 
swinging round again after he had turned from him. 

‘““Where?”’ repeated Ordway blankly, and he 
added indifferently, ““I hadn’t thought.” 

““The midday train goes west,’’ said Banks. 

“Then, I'll go west. It doesn’t matter.’ 

Banks had already started off, when turning back 
suddenly, he caught Ordway’s hand and wrung it 
in a grip that hurt. Then without speaking again, 
he hurried breathlessly in the direction from which 
he had come. 

A few steps beyond the cross-roads Ordway saw 
through the heavy foliage the light in the dining- 
room at Cedar Hill. Then as he entered the avenue, 


274 THE ANCIENT LAW 


he lost sight of it again, until he had rounded the 
curve that swept uptothefront porch. At his knock 
Emily opened the door, with a lamp held in her hand, 
and he saw her face, surrounded by dim waves of 
hair, shining pale and transparent in the glimmering 
circle of light. As he followed her intu the dining- 
room, he realised that after the family had gone 
upstairs to bed, she had sat at her sewing under 
the lamp and waited for his knock. At the knowl- 
edge a sense of comfort, of homeliness came over him, 
and he felt all at once that his misery was not so great 
as he had believed it to be a moment ago. 

‘May I get you something?’’ she asked, placing the 
lamp upon the table and lowering the wick that the 
flame might not shine on his pallid and haggard face. 

He shook his head; then as she turned from him 
toward the hearth, he followed her and stood looking 
down at the smouldering remains of a wood fire. 
Her work-basket and a pile of white ruffles which she 
had been hemming were on the table, but moved 
by a feeling of their utter triviality in the midst of a 
tragedy she vaguely understood, she swept them 
hurriedly into a chair, and came over to lay her hand 
upon his arm. 

“What can I do? Oh, what can I do?” she asked. 
Taking her hand from his sleeve, he held it for an 
instant in his grasp, as if the pressure of her throbbing 
palm against his revived some living current under 
the outer deadness that enveloped him. 

“T am going away from Tappahannock to-morrow, 
Emily,” he said. 


BETWEEN MAN AND WOMAN 275 


“To-morrow?” she repeated, and laid her free 
hand upon his shoulder with a soothing, motherly 
gesture—a gesture which changed their spiritual 
relations to those of a woman and a child. 

‘“‘A man asked me three questions to-night,’ he 
went on quietly, yet in a voice which seemed to 
feel a pang in every word it uttered. ‘“‘He asked 
me if my name was Daniel Smith, and I answered— 
no.” 

As he hesitated, she lifted her face and smiled at 
him, with a smile which he knew to be the one expres- 
sion of love, of comprehension, that she could offer. 
It was a smile which a mother might have bent upon 
a child that was about to pass under the surgeon’s 
knife, and it differed from tears only in that it cffered 
courage and not weakness. 

““He asked me if I had been in prison before I 
came to Tappahannock—and I answered—yes.”’ 

His voice broke, rather than ceased, and lifting 
his gaze from her hands he looked straight into her 
wide-open eyes. The smile which she had turned 
to him a moment before was still on her lips, frozen 
there in the cold pallor of her face. Her eyes were 
the only things about her which seemed alive, and 
they appeared to him now not as eyes but.as thoughts 
made visible. Bending her head quickly she kissed 
the hand which enclosed her own. 

*‘T still believe,’’ she said, and looked into his face. 

“But it is true,’’ he replied slowly. 

“But it is not the whole truth,’”’ she answered, 
“‘and for that reason it is half a lie.” 


276 THE ANCIENT LAW 


“Yes, it is not the whole truth,’ he repeated, in 
his effort to catch something of her bright courage. 

“Why should they judge you by that and by 
nothing else?’’ she demanded with passion. “If 
that was true, is not your life in Tappahannock 
true also?”’ 

“To you—to you,” he answered, “but to-morrow 
everything will be forgotten about me except the 
fact that because I had been in prison, I have lived 
a lie.” 

“You are wrong—oh, believe me, you are wrong,” 
she said softly, while her tears broke forth and 
streamed down her white face. 

“No,” he returned patiently, as if weighing her 
words in his thoughts, “I am right, and my life 
here is wasted now from the day I came. All that 
I do from this moment will be useless. I must go 
away.” 

‘““But where?” she questioned passionately, as 
Banks had questioned before her. 

““Where?’”’ he echoed, “I don’t know—anywhere. 
The midday train goes west.” 

“And what will you do in the new place?” she 
asked through her tears. 

He shook his head as if the question hardly con- 
cerned him. 

“TI shall begin again,” he answered indifferently 
at last. 

She was turning hopelessly from him, when her 
eyes fell upon a slip of yellow paper which Beverly 
had placed under a vase on the mantel, and drawing 


BETWEEN MAN AND WOMAN ~ 277 


it out, she glanced at the address before giving it 
into Ordway’s hands. 

“This must have come for you in the afternoon,” 
she said, ‘‘I did not see it.” 

Taking the telegram from her, he opened it slowly, 
and read the words twice over. 


“Your father died last night. Will you come home? 
*“RICHARD ORDWay.” 








BOOK THIRD 
THE LARGER PRISON 


eae 
re Cat ed 


- 
< set 


ates 











CHAPTER I 
THE RETURN TO LIFE 


As THE train rounded the long curve, Ordway 
leaned from the window and saw spread before him 
the smiling battlefields that encircled Botetourt. 
From the shadow and sunlight of the distance a wind 
blew in his face, and he felt suddenly younger, fresher, 
as if the burden of the years had been lifted from 
him. The Botetourt to which he was returning was 
the place of his happiest memories; and closing 
his eyes to the landscape, he saw Lydia standing 
under the sparrows that flew out from the ivied 
walls of the old church. He met her pensive gaze; 
he watched her faint smile under the long black 
feather in her hat. 

‘“‘His death was unexpected,’’ said a strange voice 
in his ear,‘‘ but for the past five years I ’ve seen that 
he was a failing man.” 

The next instant his thoughts had scattered like 
startled birds, and without turning his head, he sat 
straining his ears to follow the conversation that went 
on, above the roar of the train, in the seat behind him. 

‘Had a son, did n’t he?” inquired the man who 
had not spoken. ‘‘What’s become of him, I’d like 
to know? I mean the chap who went to smash 
somewhere in the North.” 

281 


282 THE ANCIENT LAW 


“Oh, he misappropriated trust funds and got 
found out and sent to prison. When he came out, 
he went West, I heard, and struck a gold mine, but, 
all the same, he left his wife and children for the 
old man to look after. Ever seen his wife? Well, 
she’s a downright saint, if there ever lived one.” 

“‘And yet he went wrong, the more’s the pity.” 

“It’s a funny thing,’’ commented the first speaker, 
who was evidently of a philosophic bent, “‘but I’ve 
often noticed that a good wife is apt to make a bad 
husband. It looks somehow as if male human 
nature, like the Irish members, is obliged to sit on 
the Opposition bench. The only example that 
ever counts with it, is an example that urges the 
other way.” 

“Well, what about this particular instance? I 
hope at least that she has come into the old man’s 
money ?”’ 

“Nobody can tell, but it’s generally believed 
that the two children will get the most of it. The 
son left a boy and a girl when he went to prison, 
you know.” 

““Ah, that’s rather a pity, isn’t it?” 

“Well, I can’t say—they ’ve got good blood as 
well as bad, when it comes to that. My daughter 
went to school with the girl, and she was said to be, 
by long odds, the most popular member of her class. 
She graduated last spring, and people tell me that 
she has turned out to be the handsomest young 
woman in Botetourt.” 

““Like the mother?”’ 


THE RETURN TO LIFE 283 


he gs No, dark and tall, with those snapping blue eyes 
of her grandmother’s-——” 


So Alice was no longer the little girl in short white 
skirts, outstanding like a ballet dancer’s! There was 
a pang for him in the thought, and he tried in vain 
to accustom himself to the knowledge that she would 
meet him to-night as a woman, not as a child. He 
remembered the morning when she had run out, 
as he passed up the staircase, to beg him to come in 
to listen to her music lesson; and with the sound 
of the stumbling scales in his ears, he felt again 
that terrible throbbing of his pulses and the dull 
weight of anguish which had escaped at last in an 
outburst of bitterness. 

With a jolting motion the train drew up into 
the little station, and following the crowd that 
pressed through the door of the car, he emerged 
presently into the noisy throng of Negro drivers 
gathered before the rusty vehicles which were waiting 
beside the narrow pavement. Pushing aside the 
gaily decorated whips which encircled him at his 
approach, he turned, after a moment’s hesitation, 
into one of the heavily shaded streets, which seemed 
to his awakened memory to have remained unaltered 
since the afternoon upon which he had left the town 
almost twenty yearsago. The same red and gold 
maples stirred gently above his head; the same 
silent, green-shuttered houses were withdrawn be- 
hind glossy clusters of microphylla ‘rose-creepers. 
Even the same shafts of sunshine slanted across 


284 THE ANCIENT LAW 


the roughly paved streets, which were strewn thickly 
with yellowed leaves. It was to Ordway as if a 
pleasant dream had descended upon the place, and 
had kept unchanged the particular golden stillness 
of that autumn afternoon when he had last seen it. 
All at once he realised that what Tappahannock 
needed was not progress, but age; and he saw for 
the first time that the mellowed charm of Botetourt 
was relieved against the splendour of an historic 
background. Not the distinction of the present, 
but the enchantment of the past, produced this 
quality of atmosphere into which the thought of 
Tappahannock entered like a vulgar discord. 
The dead, not the living, had built these walls, had 
paved these streets, had loved and fought and 
starved beneath these maples; and it was the memory 
of such solemn things that steeped the little town 
in its softening haze of sentiment. A thrill of 
pleasure, more intense than any he had known 
for months, shot through his heart, and the 
next instant he acknowledged with a sensation of 
shame that he was returning, not only to his people, 
but to his class. Was this all that experience, that 
humiliation, could do for one-—that he should still 
find satisfaction in the refinements of habit, in the 
mere external pleasantness of life? As he passed the 
old church he saw that the sparrows still fluttered 
in and out of the ivy, which was full of twittering 
cries like a gigantic bird’s nest, and he had suddenly 
a ghostly feeling as if he were a moving shadow under 
shadowy trees and unreal shafts of sunlight. A 


THE RETURN TO LIFE 285 


moment later he almost held his breath lest the 
dark old church and the dreamy little town should 
vanish before his eyes and leave him alone in the 
outer space of shadows. 

Coming presently under a row of poplars to the 
street in which stood his father’s house—a square 
red brick building with white Doric columns to 
the portico—he saw with a shock of surprise that 
the funeral carriages were standing in a solemn train 
for many blocks. Until that moment it had not 
occured to him that he might come in time to look 
on the dead face of the man who had not forgiven 
him while he was alive; and at first he shivered and 
shrank back as if hesitating to enter the door that 
had been so lately closed against him. An old 
Negro driver, who sat on the curbing, wiping the 
broad black band on his battered silk hat with 
a red bandanna handkerchief, turned to speak to 
him with mingled sympathy and curiosity. 

“Ef’n you don’ hurry up, you’ll miss de bes’ er 
hit, marster,’’ he remarked. ‘‘Dey’s been gwine on 
a pow’ful long time, but I’se been a-lisenin’ wid all 
my years en I ain’ hyearn nairy a sh’ut come thoo’ 
de do’. Lawd! Lawd! dey ain’ mo’n like I°mo’n, 
caze w’en dey buried my Salviny I set up sech a 
sh’uttin’ dat I bu’st two er my spar ribs clean 
ter pieces.” 

Still muttering to himself he fell to polishing his 
old top hat more vigorously, while Ordway quickened 
his steps with an effort, and entering the gate, ascend- 
ed the brick walk to the white steps of the portico. 


286 THE ANCIENT LAW 


A wide black streamer hung from the bell handle, 
so pushing open the door, which gave noiselessly 
before him, he entered softly into the heavy perfume 
of flowers. From the room on his right, which he 
remembered dimly as the formal drawing-room in 
the days of his earliest childhood, he heard a low 
voice speaking as if in prayer; and looking across 
the threshold, he saw a group of black robed persons 
kneeling in the faint light which fell through the 
chinks in the green shutters. The intense odour of 
lilies awoke in him a sharp anguish, which had 
no association in his thoughts with his father’s 
death, and which he could not explain until the 
incidents of his mother’s funeral crowded, one by 
one, into his memory. The scent of lilies was the 
scent of death in his nostrils, and he saw again the 
cool, high-ceiled room in the midst of which her 
coffin had stood, and through the open windows 
the wide green fields in which spring was just putting 
forth. That was nearly thirty years ago, yet the 
emotion he felt at this instant was less for his 
father who had died yesterday than for his mother 
whom he had lost while he was still a child. 

At his entrance no one had observed him, and 
while the low prayer went on, he stood with bowed 
head searching among the veiled figures about the 
coffin for the figure of his wife. Was that Lydia, 
he wondered, kneeling there in her mourning gar- 
ments with her brow hidden in her clasped hands? 
And as he looked at her it seemed to him that she had 
never lifted the black veil which she had lowered 


THE RETURN TO LIFE 287 


over her face at their last parting. Though he was 
outwardly now among his own people, though 
the physical distance which divided him from his 
wife and children was barely a dozen steps, the 
loneliness which oppressed him was like the loneliness 
of the prison; and he understood that his real home 
was not here, but in Tappahannock—that his true 
kinship was with the labourers whose lives he had 
shared and whose bitter poverty he had lessened. 
In the presence of death he was conscious of the 
space, the luxury, the costly funeral wreaths that 
surrounded him; and these external refinements 
of living produced in him a sensation of shyness, as 
if he had no longer a rightful place in the class in 
which he had been born. Against his will he grew 
ashamed of his coarse clothes and his roughened 
hands; and with this burning sense of humiliation 
a wave of homesickness for Tappahannock swept 
over him—for the dusty little town, with its 
hot, close smells and for the blue tent of sky 
which was visible from his ivied window at 
Cedar Hill. Then he remembered, with a pang, 
that even from Tappahannock he had been cast out. 
For the second time since his release from prison, 
he felt cowed and beaten, like an animal that is 
driven to bay. The dead man in his coffin was 
more closely woven into his surroundings than was 
the living son who had returned to his inheritance. 

As the grave faces looked back at him at the end 
of the prayer, he realised that they belonged to 
branches, near or distant, of the Ordway connections. 


288 THE ANCIENT LAW 


With the first glimpse of his figure in the doorway 
there came no movement of recognition; then he 
observed a slight start of surprise—or was it dismay? 
He knew that Lydia had seen him at last, though 
he did not look at her. Jt appeared to him suddenly 
that his return was an insult to her as well as to the 
dead man who lay there, helpless yet majestic, in 
the centre of the room. Flight seemed to him at 
the instant the only amendment in his power, 
and he had made an impulsive start back from the 
threshold, when the strained hush was broken by a 
word that left him trembling and white as from a blow. 

‘‘Father!’”’ cried a voice, in the first uncontrollable 
joy of recognition; and with an impetuous rush 
through the crowd that surrounded her, Alice threw 
herself into his arms. 

A mist swam before his eyes and he lost the encirc- 
ling faces in a blur of tears; but as she clung to his 
breast and he held her close, he was conscious of a 
fierce joy that throbbed, like a physical pain, in his 
throat. The word which she had uttered had brought 
his soul up from the abyss as surely as if it were lifted 
by the hands of angels; and with each sobbing breath 
of happiness she drew, he felt that her nature was 
knit more firmly into his. The repulse he had receiv- 
ed the moment before was forgotten, and while he 
held her drawn apart in the doorway, the silence of 
Lydia, and even the reproach of the dead man, had 
ceased to affect him. In that breathless, hysterical 
rush to his embrace Alice saved him to-day as Emily’s 
outstretched hand had saved him three years before. 


ee a S 


THE RETURN TO LIFE 289 


“They did not tell me! Oh, why, did they not 
tell me?’’ cried the girl, lifting her head from his 
breast, and the funeral hush that shrouded the room 
could not keep back the ecstasy in her voice. Even 
when after the first awkward instant the others 
gathered around him, nervous, effusive, friendly, 
Alice still clung to his hands, kissing first one and 
then the other and then both together, with the 
exquisite joyous abandonment of a child. 

Lydia had kissed him, weeping softly under her 
long black veil, and hiding her pale, lovely face the 
moment afterwards in her clasped hands. Dick, his 
son, had touched his cheek with his fresh young 
mouth; Richard Ordway, his father’s brother, had 
shaken him by the hand; and the others, one and all, 
kinsmen and kinswomen, had given him their em- 
barrassed, yet kindly, welcome. But it was on 
Alice that his eyes rested, while he felt his whole being 
impelled toward her in a recovered rapture that was 
almost one of worship. In her dark beauty, with 
her splendid hair, her blue, flashing Ordway eyes, 
and her lips which were too red and too full for per- 
fection, she appeared to him the one vital thing 
among the mourning figures in this house of death. 
Her delight still ran in little tremors through her 
limbs, and when a moment later, she slipped her 
hand through his arm, and followed Lydia and Richard 
Ordway down the steps, and into one of the waiting 
carriages, he felt that her bosom quivered with the 
emotion which the solemn presence of his father 
had forced back from her lips. 


CHAPTER II 
His Own P.iace 


Some hours later when he sat alone in his room, 
he told himself that he could never forget the 
drive home from the cemetery in the closed carriage. 
Lydia had raised her veil slightly, as if in a desire 
for air, and as she sat with her head resting against 
the lowered blind, he could trace the delicate, pale 
lines of her mouth and chin, and a single wisp 
of her ash blond hair which lay heavily upon her 
forehead. Not once had she spoken, not once 
had she met his eyes of her own accord, and he had 
discovered that she leaned almost desperately upon 
the iron presence of Richard Ordway. Had his sin, 
indeed, crushed her until she had not power to lift 
her head? he asked passionately, with a sharper 
remorse than he had ever felt. 

“T am glad that you were able to come in time,”’ 
Richard Ordway remarked in his cold, even voice; 
and after this the rattle of the wheels on the cobble- 
stones in the street was the only sound which broke 
the death-like stillness in which they sat. No, he 
could never forget it, nor could he forget the bewilder- 
ing effect of the sunshine when they opened the 
carriage door. Beside the curbing a few idle Negroes 
were left of the crowd that had gathered to watch 


290 


HIS OWN PLACE 291 


the coffin borne through the gate, and the pavement 
was thick with dust, as if many hurrying feet had. 
tramped by since the funeral had passed. As they 
entered the house the scent of lilies struck him 
afresh with all the agony of its associations. The 
shutters were still closed, the chairs were still ar- 
ranged in their solemn circle, the streamer of crape, 
hurriedly untied from the bell handle, still lay where 
it had been thrown on the library tabie; and as he 
crossed the threshold, he trod upon some fading 
lilies which had falien, unnoticed, from a funeral 
wreath. Then, in the dining-room, Richard Ordway 
poured out a glass of whiskey, and in the very instant. 
when he was about to raise it to his lips, he put it 
hurriedly down and pushed the decanter aside with 
an embarrassed and furtive movement. 

“Do you feel the need of acup of coffee, Daniel?’’ 
he asked in a pleasant, conciliatory tone, ‘‘or will 
you have only a glass of seltzer?” 

“T am not thirsty, thank you,’’ Daniel responded 
shortly, and the next moment he asked Alice to show 
him the room in which he would stay. 

With laughing eagerness she led him up the great 
staircase to the chamber in which he had slept as a 
boy. 

“Tt ’s just next to Dick’s,” she said, ‘‘and mother’s 
and mine are directly across the hall. At first we 
thought of putting you in the red guest-room, but 
that’s only for visitors, so we knew you would be 
sure to like this better.”’ 

“Yes, I'll like this better,’ he responded, and 


292 THE ANCIENT LAW 


then as she would have moved away, he caught her, 
with a gesture of anguish, back to his arms: 

‘““You remember me, Alice, my child? you have 
not forgotten me?”’ 

She laughed merrily, biting her full red lips the 
moment afterward to check the sound. 

‘““Why, how funny of you! I was quite a big girl— 
don’t you remember?—when you went away. It 
was so dull afterwards that I cried for days, and that 
was why I was so overjoyed when mamma told 
me you would come back. It was never dull when 
you lived at home with us, because you would always 
take me to the park or the circus whenever I grew 
tired of dolls. Nobody did that after you went away 
and I used to cry and kick sometimes thinking that 
they would tell you and bring you back.”’ 

‘‘And you remembered me chiefly because of the 
park and the circus?’ he asked, smiling for joy, as 
he kissed her hand which lay on his sleeve. 

‘‘Oh, I never forget anything, you know. Mamma 
even says that about me. I remember my first 
nurse and the baker’s boy with red cheeks who used 
to bring me pink cakes when I was three years old. 
No, I never forget—I never forget,’’ she repeated 
with vehemence. 

Animation had kindled her features into a beauty 
of colour which made her eyes bluer and brighter 
and softened the too intense contrast of her full, 
red lips. 

‘“‘All these years I’ve hoped that you would come 
back and that things would change,’’ she said im- 


HIS OWN PLACE 293 


pulsively, her words tripping rapidly over one 
another. ‘‘Everything is so dreadfully grave and 
solemn here. Grandfather hated noise so that he 
would hardly let me laugh if he was in the house. 
Then mamma’s health is wrecked, and she lies always 
on the sofa, and never goes out except for a drive 
sometimes when it is fair.” 

‘‘Mamma’s health is wrecked?” he repeated in- 
quiringly, as she paused. 

“Oh, that’s what everybody says about her—her 
health is wrecked. And Uncle Richard is hardly 
any better, for he has a wife whose health is wrecked 
also. And Dick—he isn’t sick, but he might as wen 
be, he is so dull and plodding and over nice——”’ 

‘““And you Alice?” 

“IT? Oh, I’m not dull, but I’m ee eta 
—you'll find that out. I like fun and pretty clothes 
and new people and strange places. I want to 
marry and have a home of my own and a lot of rings 
like mamma’s, and a carriage with two men on the 
box, and to go to Europe to buy things whenever 
I please. That’s the way Molly Burridge does and 
she was only two classes ahead of me. How rough 
your hands are, papa, and what a funny kind of 
shirt you have on. Do people dress like that where 
you came from? Well, I don’t like it, so you ‘ll have 
to change.”’ 

She had gone out at last, forgetting to walk properly 
in her mourning garments, tripping into a run on 
the threshold, and then checking herself with a prim, 
mocking look over her shoulder. Not until the door 


294 THE ANCIENT LAW 


had closed with a slam behind her black skirt, did 
Ordway’s gaze turn from following her and fix itself 
on the long mirror between the windows, in which 
he could see, as Alice had seen the moment before, 
his roughened hands, his carelessly trimmed hair 
and his common clothes. He was dressed as the 
labourers dressed on Sundays in Tappahannock; 
though, he remembered now, that in that crude 
little town he had been conspicuous for the neatness, 
almost the jauntiness, of his attire. As he laid out 
presently on the bed his few poor belongings, he 
told himself, with determination, that for Alice’s 
sake even this must be changed. He was no longer 
of the class of Baxter, of Banks, of Mrs. Twine. 
All that was over, and he must return now into the 
world in which his wife and his children had kept a 
place. To do Alice honour—at least not to do 
her further shame—would become from this day, 
he realised, the controlling motive of his life. Then, 
as he looked down at the coarse, unshapely gar- 
ments upon the delicate counterpane, he knew that 
Daniel Smith and Daniel Ordway were now parted 
forever. 

He was still holding one of the rough blue shirts 
in his hand, when a servant entered to inquire if 
there was anything that he might need. The man, 
a bright young mulatto, was not one of the old family 
slaves; and while he waited, alert and intelligent, 
upon the threshold, Ordway was seized by a nervous 
feeling that he was regarded with curiosity and 
Suspicion by the black rolling eyes. 


HIS OWN PLACE 295 


“‘Where is uncle Boaz? He used to wait upon 
me,” he asked. 

“He’s daid, suh. He drapped down daid right 
on de do’ step.” 

‘‘And Aunt Mirandy?”’ 

“She ’s daid, too, en’ I ’se her chile.’’ 

‘‘Oh, you are, are you?” said Ordway, and he had 
again the sensation that he was watched through 
inquisitive eyes. “That is all now,” he added 
presently, ‘‘you may go,” and it was with a long 
breath of relief that he saw the door close after the 
figure of Aunt Mirandy’s son. 

When a little later he dressed himself and went 
out into the hall, he found, to his annoyance, that he 
walked with a cautious and timid step like that 
of a labourer who has stumbled by accident into 
surroundings of luxury. As he descended the wide 
curving staircase, with his hand on the mahogany 
balustrade, the sound of his footsteps seemed to 
reverberate disagreeably through the awful funereal 
silence in which he moved. If he could only 
hear Alice’s laugh, Dick’s whistle, or even the 
garrulous flow of the Negro voices that he had listened 
to in his childhood. With a pang he recalled that 
Uncle Boaz was dead, and his heart swelled as he 
remembered how often he had passed up and down 
this same staircase on the old servant’s shoulder. 
At that age he had felt no awe of the shining empti- 
ness and the oppressive silence. Then he had believed 
himself to be master of all at which he looked; now he 
‘was conscious of that complete detachment from his 


296 THE ANCIENT LAW 


surroundings which produces almost a sense of the 
actual separation of soul and body. 

Reaching the hall below, he found that some 
hurried attempt had been made to banish or to 
conceal the remaining signs of the funeral. The 
doors and windows were open, the shreds of crape 
had disappeared from the carpet, and the fading 
lilies had been swept out upon the graveled walk 
in the yard. Upon entering the library, which 
invited him by its rows of calf-bound books, he 
discovered that Richard Ordway was patiently 
awaiting him in the large red leather chair which 
had once been the favourite seat of his father. 

‘Before I go home, I think it better to have a little 
talk with you, Daniel,’’ began the old man, as he 
motioned to a sofa on the opposite side of the Turkish 
rug before the open grate. ‘It has been a peculiar 
satisfaction to me to feel that I was able to bring 
you back in time for the service.” 

“TI came,” replied Daniel slowly, ‘‘as soon as I 
received your telegram.’’ He hesitated an instant 
and then went on in the same quiet tone in which 
the other had spoken, ‘Do you think, though, that 
he would have wished me to come at all?’’ 

After folding the newspaper which he had held 
in his hand, Richard laid it, with a courteous gesture 
upon the table beside him. As he sat there with 
his long limbs outstretched and relaxed, and his 
handsome, severe profile resting against the leather 
back of his chair, the younger man was impressed, 
as if for the first time, by the curious mixture of 


HIS OWN PLACE 297 


strength and refinement in his features. He was 
not only a cleverer man than his brother had been, 
he was gentler, smoother, more distinguished on 
every side. In spite of his reserve, it was evident 
that he had wished to be kind—that he wished 
it still; yet this kindness was so removed from 
the ordinary impulse of humanity that it appeared 
to his nephew to be in a way as detached and im- 
personal as an abstract virtue. The very lines 
of his face were drawn with the precision, the finality, 
of a geometrical figure. To imagine that they could 
melt into tenderness was as impossible as to conceive 
of their finally crumbling into dust. 

‘“‘He would have wished it —he did wish it,’”’ he 
said, after a minute. ‘“‘I talked with him only a 
few hours before his death, and he told me then that 
it was necessary to send for you —that he felt that 
he had neglected his duty in not bringing you home 
immediately after your release. He saw at last 
that it would have been far better to have acted as I 
strongly advised at the time.” 

“It was his desire, then, that I should return?’ 
asked Daniel, while a stinging moisture rose to his 
eyes at the thought that he had not looked once upon 
the face of the dead man. “I wish I had known.” 

A slight surprise showed in the other’s gesture of 
response, and he glanced hastily away as he might 
have done had he chanced to surprise his nephew 
while he was still without his boots or his shirt. 

“‘T think he realised before he died that the individ- 
ual has no right to place his personal pride above 


298 THE ANCIENT LAW 


the family tie,’ he resumed quietly, ignoring the 
indecency of emotion as he would have ignored, 
probably, the unclothed body. ‘“‘I had said much 
the same thing to him eight years ago, when I told 
him that he would realise before his death that he 
was not morally free to act as he had done with 
regard to you. As a matter of fact,’’ he observed 
in his trained, legal voice, “‘the family is, after all, 
the social unit, and each member is as closely related 
as the eye to the ear or the right arm to the left. 
It is illogical to speak of denying one’s flesh and 
blood, for it can’t be done.”’ 

So this was why they had received him. He 
turned his head away, and his gaze rested upon the 
boughs of the great golden poplar beyond the window. 

“It is understood, then,’”’ he asked ‘‘that 1 am to 
come back—pback to this house to live?’ 

When he had finished, but not until then, Richard 
Ordway looked at him again with his dry, conven- 
tional kindness. ‘“‘If you are free,’’ he began, altering 
the word immediately lest it should suggest painful 
associations to his companion’s mind, “‘I mean if 
you have no other binding engagements, no decided 
plans for the future.” 

‘““No, I have made no other plans. I was working 
as a book-keeper in a tobacco warehouse in Tappa- 
hannock.”’ 

‘‘As a book-keeper?’’ repeated Richard, as he 
glanced down inquiringly at the other’s hands. 

‘“Oh, I worked sometimes out of doors, but the 
position I held was that of confidential clerk.’’ 


x 


HIS OWN PLACE 299 


The old man nodded amiably, accepting the expla- 
nation with a readiness for which the other was not 
prepared. “‘I was about to offer you some legal 
work in my office,’’ he remarked. ‘‘Dry and musty 
stuff, I fear it is, but it’s better—isn’ t it?—for a man 
to have some kind of occupation ” 

Though the words were uttered pleasantly enough, 
it seemed to the younger man that the concluding 
and significant phrase was left unspoken. ‘‘Some 
kind of occupation to keep you out of tempation’”’ 
was what Richard had meant to say—what he had 
withheld, from consideration, if not from humanity. 
While the horror of the whole situation closed over 
Daniel like a mental darkness, he remembered the 
sensitive shrinking of Lydia on the drive home, 
the prying, inquisitive eyes of the mulatto servant, 
the furtive withdrawal of the whiskey by the man 
who sat opposite to him. With all its attending 
humiliation and despair, there rushed upon him the 
knowledge that by the people of his own household 
he was regarded still as a creature to be restrained 
and protected at every instant. Though outwardly 
they had received him, instinctively they had re- 
pulsed him. The thing which stood between them 
and himself was neither of their making nor of his. 
It belonged to their very nature and was woven in 
with their inner fibre. It was a creation, not of the 
individual, but of the race, and the law by which 
it existed was rooted deep in the racial structure. 
Tradition, inheritance, instinct—these were the 
barriers through which he had broken and which had 





qua THE ANCIENT LAW 


closed like the impenetrable sea-gates behind him. 
Though he were to live on day by day as a saint 
among them, they could never forget: though he 
were to shed his heart’s blood for them, they would 
never believe. To convince them of his sincerity 
was more hopeless, he understood, than to reanimate 
their affection. In their very forgiveness they had 
not ceased to condemn him, and in the shelter which 
they offered him there would be always a hidden 
restraint. With the thought it seemed to him that 
he was stifling in the closeness of the atmosphere, 
that he must break away again, that he must find 
air and freedom, though it cost him all else besides. 
The possibility of his own weakness seemed created 
in him by their acceptance of it; and he felt suddenly 
a terror lest the knowledge of their suspicion should 
drive him to justify it by his future in Botetourt. 

‘*Ves, it is better for me to work,”’ he said aloud. 
' “T hope that I shall be able to make myself of some 
small use in your office.’ 

‘‘There’s no doubt of that, I’m sure,’ 
Richard, in his friendliest tone. 

‘It is taken for granted, then, that I shall live 
on here with my wife and children?” 

‘““‘We have decided that it is best. But as for 
your wife, you must remember that she is very 
much of an invalid. Do not forget that she has had 
a sad—a most tragic life.” 

“T promise vou that I shall not forget it—make 
your mind easy.” 

After this it seemed to Daniel that there was 


’ 


responded 


HIS OWN PLACE 301 


nothing further to be said; but before rising from 
his chair, the old man sat for a moment with his 
thin lips tightly folded and a troubled frown ruffling 
his forenead. In the dim twilight the profile out- 
lined against the leather chair appeared to have 
been ground rather than roughly hewn out of granite. 

““About the disposition of the estate, there were 
some changes made shortly before your father’s 
death,’’ remarked Richard presently. ‘‘In the will 
itself you were not mentioned; a provision was 
made for your wife and the bulk of the property 
left to your two children. Butinacodicil, which was 
added the day before your father died, he directed 
that you should be given a life interest in the house 
aswell as in investments to the amount of one hundred 
and fifty thousand dollars. This is to be paid you 
in the form of a quarterly allowance, which will 
yield you a personal income of about six thousand 
a year.”’ 

‘“‘I understand,” replied the younger man, with- 
,out emotion, almost without surprise. At the 
“moment he was wondering by what name his father 
had alluded to him in his will. Had he spoken: of 
him as ‘‘my son,’”’ or merely as ‘‘ Daniel Ordway”? 

“That is all, I think,’’ remarked the other, with a 
movement which expressed, in spite of him, a sensa- 
tion of relief. With a smile which appeared to be 
little more than a muscular contraction of his mouth, 
he held out his hand and stood for a moment, vainly 
searching for a phrase or a word that would fit the 
delicate requirements of the occasion. 


302 _ PHE ANCIENT LAW 


‘Well, I shail never cease to be thankful that you 
were with us at the cemetery,” he said at last ina 
tone which was a patent admission that he had 
failed. Then, with a kindly inclination of his head, 
he released the hand he held and passed at his rapid, 
yet dignified step out of the house. 








CHAPTER III 
THE OUTWARD PATTERN 


Tue front door had hardly closed when a breath 
of freshness blew into the library with the entrance 
of Alice, and a moment afterwards the butler rolled 
back the mahogany doors of the dining-room and 
they saw the lighted candles and the chrysanthe- 
mums upon the dinner table. 

‘“We hardly ever dress,” said Alice, slipping her 
hand through his arm, “‘I wish we did.’ 

‘Well, if you ‘Il only pardon these clothes to-night 
I ’il promise to call on the tailor before breakfast,” 
he returned, smiling, conscious that he watched 
in anxiety lest the look of delight in his presence 
should vanish from her face. 

‘*Oh, it does n’t matter now, because we ’re in the 
deepest grief—are n’t we?—and mamma is n’t coming 
down. She wants to see you, by the way, just for a 
minute when you go upstairs. It is to be just for a 
minute, I was to be very particular about that, as 
she is broken down. I wonder why they have put 
so many covers. There is nobody but you and Dick. 
I asked Uncle Richard, but he said that he would n’t 
stay. It’s just as well he did n’t—he’s so dreadfully 
dull, isn’t he, papa?”’ 

‘*All I wish is that I were dull in Uncle Richard’s 

393 


304 THE ANCIENT LAW 


way,’ remarked Dick, with his boyish air of superior- 
ity, ‘‘I’d be the greatest lawyer in the state then, 
when my turn came.” 

‘“‘And you’d be even more tiresome than you 
are now,” retorted the girl with a flash of irritation 
which brought out three fine, nervous wrinkles 
on her delicate forehead. 

“Well, I shouldn’t have your temper anyway,” 
commented Dick imperturbably, as he ate his 
soup. ‘‘Do you remember, papa, how Alice 
used to bite and scratch as a baby? She’d like 
to behave exactly that way now if she weren’t 
OO: Sal: 

‘“‘Oh, I know Alice better than you do,” said Ord- 
way, in a voice which he tried to make cheerful. 
The girl sat on his right, and while she choked 
back her anger, he reached out and catching her 
hand, held it against his cheek. ‘‘We stand to- 
gether, Alice and I,’’ he said softly—‘‘ Alice and I.”’ 

As he repeated the words a wave of joy rose in his 
heart, submerging the disappointment, the bitterness, 
the hard despair, of the last few hours. Here also, 
as well as in Tappahannock, he found awaiting him 
his appointed task. 

Dick laughed pleasantly, preserving always the 
unshakable self-possession which reminded his father 
of Richard Ordway. He was a good boy, Daniel 
knew, upright, honest, manly, all the things which 
his grandfather and his great-grandfather had been 
before him. 

“hen you ll have to stand with Geoffrey Heath,” 


THE OUTWARD PATTERN 305 


he said jestingly, “‘and, by Jove, I don’t think I’d 
care for his company.” 

‘Geoffrey Heath?” repeated Ordway inquiringly, 
with his eyes on his daughter, who sat silent and 
angry, biting her lower lip. Her mouth, which he 
had soon discovered to be her least perfect feature, 
was at the same time her most expressive one. At 
her slightest change cf mood, he watched it tremble 
into a smile or a frown, and from a distance it was 
plainly the first thing one noticed about her face. 
Now, as she sat there, with her eyes on her plate, 
her vivid lips showed like a splash of carmine in 
the lustreless pallor of her skin. 

‘‘Oh, he’s one of Alice’s chums,’ returned Dick 
with his merciless youthful sneer, ‘‘she has a pretty 
lot of them, too, though he is by long odds the 
worst.”’ , 

‘Well, he’s rich enough anyway,’’ protested Alice 
defiantly, ‘‘he keeps beautiful horses and sends me 
boxes of candy, and I don’t care a bit for the rest.” 

‘“Who is he, by the way?” asked Daniel. ‘‘There 
was a family of Heaths who lived near us in the 
country when I was a boy. Is he one of these?’ 

‘‘He’s the son of old Rupert Heath, who made a 
million out of some panic in stocks. Uncle Richard 
says the father was all right, but he’s tried his best to 
break up Alice’s craze about Geoffrey. But let her 
once get her nose to the wind and nobody can do 
anything with her.”’ 

“Well, I can, can’t I, darling?’ asked Ordway, 
smiling in spite of ajealous pang. The appeal of the 


306 THE ANCIENT LAW 


girl to him was like the appeal of the finer part of his 
own nature. Her temptations he recognised as 
the old familiar temptations of his youth, and the 
kinship between them seemed at the moment some- 
thing deeper and more enduring than the tie of blood. 
Yet the thought that she was his daughter awoke 
in him a gratitude that was almost as acute as pain. 
The emptiness of his life was filled suddenly to over- 
flowing, and he felt again that he had found here 
as he had found at Tappahannock both his mission 
and his reward. 

When dinner was over he left the boy and girl in 
the library and went slowly, and with a nervous 
hesitation, upstairs to the room in which Lydia was 
lying on her couch, with a flower-decked tray upon 
the little inlaid table beside her. As he entered 
the room something in the luxurious atmosphere— 
in the amber satin curtains, the white bearskin 
rugs, the shining mirrors between the windows—re- 
called the early years of his marriage, and as he 
remembered them, he realised for the first time the 
immensity of the change which divided his present 
existence from his past. The time had been when he 
could not separate his inner life from his surroundings, 
and with the thought he saw in his memory the bare 
cleanliness of the blue guest-room at Cedar Hill— 
with its simple white bed, its rag carpet, its faded 
sampler worked in blue worsteds. That place had 
become as a sanctuary to him now, for it was there 
that he had known his most perfect peace, his com- 
pletest reconciliation with God. 


THE OUTWARD PATTERN 307 


As he entered the room Lydia raised herself slightly 
upon her elbow, and without turning her head, 
nervously pushed back a white silk shawl which she 
had thrown over her knees. A lamp with an amber 
shade cast its light on her averted profile, and he 
noticed that its perfect outline, its serene loveliness, 
was untouched by suffering. Already he had dis- 
covered those almost imperceptible furrows between 
Alice’s eyebrows, but when Lydia looked up at him at 
last, he saw that her beautiful forehead, under its 
parting of ash blond hair, was as smooth as a child’s. 
Was it merely the Madonna-like arrangement of her 
hair, after all, he wondered, not without bitterness, 
that had bestowed upon her that appealing expression 
of injured innocence? 

‘You wished to speak to me, Alice said,” he began 
with an awkward gesture, acutely conscious, as he 
stood there, of the amber light in the room, of the 
shining waves of her hair, of the delicate perfume 
which floated from the gold-topped boxes upon her 
dressing-table. An oval mirror above the mantel 
gave back to him the reflection of his own roughly 
clad figure, and the violent contrast between himself 
and his surroundings stung him into a sense of humili- 
ation that was like a physical smart. 

‘“‘T thought it better to speak to you— Uncle 
Richard and Dick advised me to ”’ she broke off 
in a gentle confusion, lifting her lovely, pensive eyes 
for the first time to his face. 

“Of course it is better, Lydia,’’ he answered 
gravely. ‘“‘ You must let me know what you wish — 





308 THE ANCIENT LAW 


you must tell me quite frankly just what you would 
rather that I should do——”’ 

The look of gratitude in her face gave him a sudden 
inexplicable pang. 

‘‘T am hardly more than an invalid,” she said in a 
voice that had grown firm and sweet, ‘‘ Uncle Richard 
will tell you 5 

Her reliance upon Richard Ordway aroused in him 
a passion of resentment, and for an instant the 
primitive man in him battled hotly against the 
renunciation his lips had made. 

‘‘I know, I understand,” he said hurriedly at last. 
‘“‘T appreciate it all and I shall do whatever is in my 
power to make it easier for you.’’ As he looked at 
her bowed head a wave of remorse rose in his breast 
and swept down, one by one, the impulses of anger, 
of pride, of self-righteousness. ‘‘O my dear, my 
dear, don’t you think I know what I have done to 
you?” he asked, and going a step toward her, he fell 
on his knees beside the couch and kissed passionately 
the hand that lay in her lap. ‘‘Don’t you think 
I know that I have ruined your life?’ 

For a moment her eyes dwelt thoughtfully upon 
his, and she let her hand lie still beneath his remorse- 
ful kisses, until her withdrawal of it had lost any 
appearance of haste or of discourtesy. 

“Then you will not object to my living on in this — 
way? You will not seek to change anything? You 
will ———””_ She hesitated and broke off, not impul- 
sively, but with the same clear, sweet voice in which 
she had put her question. 





THE OUTWARD PATTERN 309 


Lifting his head, he looked up at her from his knees, 
and the dumb loneliness in his eyes caused her at last 
to drop her own to the rug upon which he knelt. 

“If you will only let me care for you— serve you 
— work for you,’ he implored brokenly. ‘If you 
will only let me make up, however poorly, something 
of what you have suffered.” 

A vague discomfort, produced in her by the in- 
tensity of his gaze, moved her to draw slightly away 
from him, while she turned restlessly on her pillows. 
At the first shade of perplexity, of annoyance, that 
showed in her face, he felt, with a terrible power of 
intuition, that she was seeking in vain to estimate 
each of his heartbroken words at its full value — 
to read calmly by the light of experience the passion 
for atonement to which his lips had tried hopelessly 
to give expression. The wall of personality rose 
like a visible object between them. He might beat 
against it in desperation until his strength was gone, 
yet he knew that it would remain forever impene- 
trable, and through its thickness there would pass 
only the loud, unmeaning sound of each other’s 
voice. 

‘‘Have you lost all love for me, Lydia?” he asked. 
‘Have you even forgotten that I am the father of 
your children?’’ 

As soon as his words were uttered, he stumbled 
to his feet, horrified by the effect upon her. A change 
that was like a spasm of physical nausea had shaken 
her limbs, and he felt rather than saw that she had 
shrunk from him, convulsed and quivering, until 


310 THE ANCIENT LAW 


she was crushed powerless against the back of the 
sofa on which she lay. Her whole attitude, he rea- 
lised, was the result, not of a moral judgment, but 
of a purely physical antipathy. Her horror of him 
had become instinctive, and she was no more respon- 
sible for its existence than a child is responsible for 
the dread aroused in it by the goblins of nursery 
rhymes. His life as a convict had not only un- 
classed him in her eyes, it had put him entirely out- 
side and below the ordinary relations of human 
beings. To his wife he must remain forever an 
object of pity, perhaps, but of intense loathing and 
fear also. 

The wave of remorse turned to bitterness on his 
lips, and all the tenderer emotions he had felt when 
he knelt by her side — the self-reproach, the spiritual 
yearning, the passion for goodness, all these were 
extinguished in the sense of desolation which swept 
over him. 

‘““Don’t be afraid,” he said coldly, ‘I shall not 
touch vou.” 

‘“‘It was nothing—a moment’s pain,” she answered, 
in a wistful, apologetic voice. 

She was playing nervously with the fringe of the 
silk shawl, and he stood for a minute in silence while 
he watched her long, slender fingers twine themselves 
in and out of the tasseled ends. Then turning aside 
she pushed away the coffee service on the little table 
as if its fragrance annoyed her. 

“Ts it in your way? Do you wish it removed?” 
he inquired, and when she had nodded in reply, he 


THE OUTWARD PATTERN art 


lifted the tray and carried it in the direction of the 
door. ‘Don’t beafraid. Itis all right,’”’ he repeated 
as he went out. | 

Back in his own room again, he asked himself 
desperately if this existence could be possible? 
Would it not be better for him to lose himself a 
second time —to throw in his lot with a lower class, 
since his own had rejected him? Flinging himself 
on the floor beside the window, he pressed his forehead 
against the white painted wood as if the outward 
violence could deaden the throbbing agony he felt 
within. Again he smelt the delicate, yet intense 
perfume of Lydia’s chamber; again he saw her shrink- 
ing from him until she lay crushed and white against 
the back of the sofa; again he watched her features 
contract with the instinctive repuision she could not 
control. The pitiful deprecating gesture with which 
she had murmured: “It is nothing—a moment’s 
pain,’’ was seared forever like the mark from a burn- 
ing iron into his memory. 

‘‘No, no—it cannot be—it is impossible,’’ he said 
suddenly aloud. And though he had not the 
strength to frame the rest of his thought into words, 
he knew that the impossible thing he meant was this 
life, this torture, this slow martyrdom day by day 
without hope and without end except in death. 
After all there was a way of escape, so why should 
it be closed to him? What were these people to him 
beside those others whom he might yet serve — the 
miserable, the poor, the afflicted who would take 
from him the gifts which his own had rejected? 


312 THE ANCIENT LAW 


What duty remained? What obligation? What 
responsibility? Step by step he retraced the nineteen 
years of his marriage, and he understood for the first 
time, that Lydia had given him on her wedding day 
nothing of herself beyond the gentle, apologetic 
gesture which had followed that evening her in- 
voluntary repulsion. From the beginning to the end 
she had presided always above, not shared in his 
destiny. She had wanted what he could give, but 
not himself, and when he could give nothing more 
she had shown that she wanted him nolonger. While 
he knelt there, still pressing his forehead against the 
window sill, the image of her part in his life rose 
out of the darkness of his mind, which opened and 
closed over it, and he saw her fixed, shining and im- 
movable, to receive his offerings, like some heathen 
deity above the sacrificial altar. 

The next instant the image faded and was re- 
placed by Emily as she had looked at him on that 
last evening with her soft, comforting gaze. The 
weakness of self pity came over him, and he asked 
himself in the coward’s luxury of hopeless questioning, 
what Emily would have done had she stood to him 
in Lydia’s place? He saw her parting from him 
with her bright courage at the prison doors; he saw 
her meeting him with her smile of welcome and of 
forgiveness when he came out. As once before he 
had risen to the vision of service, so now in the agony 
of his humiliation he was blessed at last with the 
understanding of love. 

For many minutes he knelt there motionless by 


THE OUTWARD PATTERN 313 


the open window, beyond which he could see the 
dimly lighted town on which a few drops of rain had 
begun to fall. The faint perfume of lilies came up 
to him from the walk below, where the broken sprays 
swept from the house were fading under the slow, 
soft rain. With the fragrance the image of Emily 
dissolved as in a mist to reappear the minute 
afterwards in a more torturing and human shape. 
He saw her now with her bright dark hair blown 
into little curls on her temples, with her radiant brown 
eyes that penetrated him with their soft, yet animated 
glance. The vigorous grace of her figure, as he had 
seen it outlined in her scant blue cotton gown against 
the background of cedars, remained motionless in 
his thoughts, bathed in a clear golden light that 
tormented his senses. 

Rising from his knees with an effort, he struck a 
match and raised the green shade from the lamp 
on the table. Then while the little blue flame flick- 
ered out in his hand, he felt that he was seized by a 
frantic, an irresistible impulse of flight. Gathering 
his clothes from the bed in the darkness, he pushed 
them hurriedly back into the bag he had emptied, 
and with a last glance at the room which had become 
unendurable to him,opened the door and went with a 
rapid step down the great staircase and into the hall 
below. The direction of his journey, as well as the 
purpose of it, was obscure in his mind. Yesterday 
he had toid himself that he could not remain 
in Tappahannock, and to-day he knew that it 
was impossible for him to live on in his father’s 


314 THE ANCIENT LAW 


house. To pass the hall door meant release—escape 
to him; beyond that there lay only the distance and 
the unknown. . 

The lights burned dimly on the staircase, and when 
he reached the bottom he could see on the carpet 
the thin reddish stream which issued from the closed 
door of the library. As he was about to pass by,a 
short sob fell on his ear, arresting him as authori- 
tatively as if it had been the sound of his own name. 
While he stood there listening the sobs ceased and 
then broke out more loudly, now violent, now smoth- 
ered, now followed by quick, furious steps across 
the floor within. Alice was shut in the room alone 
and suffering! With the realisation the bag fell 
from his hand, and turning the knob softly, he 
opened the door and paused for an instant upon 
the threshold. 

At the noise of the opening door the girl made a 
single step forward, and as she raised her hands to 
conceal her distorted features, her handkerchief, 
torn into shreds, fell to the carpet at her feet. 
Around her the room showed other signs of an out- 
break of anger —the chairs were pushed hurriedly 
out of place, the books from the centre table were 
lying with opened backs on the floor, and a vase of 
dahlias lay overturned and scattered upon the mantel. 

““T don’t care—I don’t care,’”’ she repeated, convul- 
sively. ‘‘Why do they always interfere with me? 
What right has Dick or Uncle Richard to say whom 
I shall see or whom I shall not? I hate them all. 
Mamma is always against me — so is Uncle Richard — 


THE OUTWARD PATTERN 315 


so is everybody. They side with Dick — always — 
always.”’ 

A single wave of her dark hair had fallen low on 
her forehead, and this, with the violent colour of 
her mouth, gave her a look that was almost barbaric. 
The splendid possibilities in her beauty caused him, 
in the midst of his pity, a sensation of dread. 

‘‘ Alice,’”? he said softly, almost in a whisper, and 
closing the door after him, he came to the middle 
of the room and stood near her, though still without 
touching her quivering body. 

“They side with Dick always,’’ she repeated 
furiously, ‘‘and you will side with him, too — you will 
side with him, too!”’ 

For a long pause he looked at her in silence, waiting 
until the convulsive tremors of her limbs should 
cease. 

‘“‘T shall never side against my daughter,’’ he said 
very slowly. ‘‘Alice, my child, my darling, are you 
not really mine?”’ 

A last quivering sob shook through her and she 
grew suddenly still. ‘“‘They will tell you things about 
me and you will believe them,’’ she answered sternly. 

“Against you, Alice? Against your’ 

““You will blame me as they do.” 

“TI love you,” he returned, almost as sternly as 
she had spoken. 

An emotional change, so swift that it startled him, 
broke in her look, and he saw the bright red of her 
mouth tremble and open like a flower in her glowing 
face, At the sight a sharp joy took possession 


ax6 THE ANCIENT LAW 


of him—a joy that he could measure only by the 
depth of the agony out of which he had come. With- 
out moving from his place, he stretched out his arms 
and stood waiting. 

“Alice, I love you,’ he said. 

Then his arms closed over her, for with the 
straight flight of a bird she had flown to his breast. 


CHAPTER IV 
Tue LETTER AND THE SPIRIT 


AwaAkincG before dawn, he realised with his first 
conscious thought that his life had been irrevocably 
settled while he slept. His place was here; he could not 
break away from it without leaving a ragged edge; 
and while he had believed himself to be deciding his 
future actions, that greater Destiny, of which his 
will was only a part, had arranged them for him 
during the dim pause of the night. He could feel 
still on his arm, as if it had persisted there through 
his sleep, the firm, almost viselike pressure of Alice’s 
hands, and his whole sensitive nature thrilled in 
response to this mute appeal to his fatherhood. 
Yes, his purpose, his mission, and his happiness were 
here in his father’s house. 

At breakfast he found a white rosebud on his plate, 
and as he took it up, Alice rushed in from the garden 
and threw herself into his arms. 

“TI thought you were never, never coming down!”’ 
she exclaimed, choking with laughter, and utterly 
forgetful of the shadow of death which still lay over 
the house. ‘‘At first I was afraid you might have 
gone away in the night — just as you went that awful 
day eight years ago. Then I peeped out and saw 
your boots, so I went back to bed again and fell asleep. 

317 


318 THE ANCIENT LAW 


Oh, I’m so glad you’ve come! Why did you stay 
away such an age? Now, at last, I ll have somebody 
to take my side against mamma and Dick and Uncle 
Richard a 

“But why against them, Alice? Surely they 
love you just as I do?”’ 

Biting her lips sharply, she bent her heavy brows 
in a stern and frowning expression. ‘‘Oh, they ’re 
horrid,’’ she said angrily, “they want me to live 
just as mamma does — shut up all day ina hot room 
on a hateful sofa. She reads novels all the time, 
and I despise books. I want to go away and see 
things and to have plenty of clothes and all the fun 
Ichoose. They let Dick do just as he pleases because 
he’s a boy, but they try to make me dull and stupid 
and foolish all because I’m a girl. I won’t have it 
like that and it makes them angry 7 

“Oh, well, we'll have fun together, you and I,” 
returned Ordway, with a sinking heart, ‘““but you 
must wait a bit till I catch up with you. Don’t be 
in a precious hurry, if you please.’ 

‘Shall we have a good time, then? Shall we?’’ 
she persisted, delighted, kissing him with her 
warm mouth until he was dazzled by her beauty, 
her fascination, her ardent vitality. ‘‘And you will 
do just what I wish, won’t you?’’ she whispered 
in his ear as she hung on his shoulder, ‘“‘you will 
be good and kind always? and you will make them 
leave me alone about Geoffrey Heath?’ 

‘““About Geoffrey Heath?” he repeated, and grew 
suddenly serious. . 








THE LETTER AND THE SPIRIT 319 


“‘Oh, he’s rich and he’s fun, too,’”’ she responded 
irritably. ‘‘He has asked me to ride one of his horses 
— the most beautiful chestnut mare in the world — 
but mamma scolds me about it because she says he’s 
not nice and that he did something once years ago 
about cards. Asif I cared about cards !” 

By the fear that had gripped him he could judge 
the strength of her hold on his heart. ‘‘Alice, 
be careful — promise me to be careful !’’ he entreated. 

At his words he felt her arms relax from their em- 
brace, and she seemed instantly to turn to marble 
upon his breast. ‘‘Oh, you ’re just like the others 
now. I knew you would be!” she exclaimed, as 
she drew away from him. 

Before the coldness of her withdrawal he felt that 
his will went out of him; andinone despairing flight 
of imagination he saw what the loss of her affection 
would mean now in his life. An emotion which he 
knew to be weakness pervaded not only his heart, but. 
his soul and his senses and the remotest fibre of his 
physical being. ‘‘Whatever comes I shall always 
stand by you, Alice,’’ he said. 

Though she appeared to be mollified by his subjec- 
tion, the thin almost imperceptible furrows caused 
by the moment’s anger, were still visible between her 
eyebrows. There was a certain fascination, he found, 
in watching these marks of age or of experience come 
and go on her fresh, childlike forehead, with its 
lustrous pallor, from which her splendid dark hair 
rolled back, touched with light, like a moonlit cloud. 
It was a singular characteristic of her beauty that its 


320 THE ANCIENT LAW 


appeal was rather to the imagination than to the’ 
eye, and the moments, perhaps, when she dazzled 
least were those in which she conquered most through 
her enigmatical charm. 

“You will buy some clothes, first of all, will you 
not?’’ she said, when, having finished his breakfast, 
he rose from the table and went out into the hall. 

He met her eyes laughing, filled with happiness at 
the playful authority she assumed, and yet fearful 
still lest some incautious word of his should bring out 
those fine nervous wrinkles upon her forehead. 

‘“Give me a week and Ill promise you a fashion 
plate,” he responded gaily, kissing his hand to her 
as he went down the steps, and, under the trailing 
Tose creepers at the gate, out into the street. 

Rain had fallen in the night, and the ground was 
covered with shining puddles beneath which a few 
autumn leaves showed drenched and beaten. From 
the golden and red maples above a damp odour was 
wafted down into his face by the October wind, which 
now rose and now died away with a gentle sound. In 
the pale sunshine, which had not yet drained the 
moisture from the bricks, a wonderful freshness 
seemed to emanate from the sky and the earth and the 
white-pillared houses. 

As he approached the corner, he heard his name 
called in a clear emphatic voice from the opposite 
sidewalk, and turning his head, he saw hastening 
toward him, a little elderly lady in a black silk gown 
trimmed heavily with bugles. As she neared him, 
followed by a young Negro maid bearing a market 


THE LETTER AND THE SPIRIT 321 


basket filled with vegetables, he recognised her as 
an intimate friend of his mother’s, whom he had 
known familiarly in his childhood as ‘“‘Aunt Lucy.” 
It seemed so long now since his mother’s death that 
he was attacked by a ghostly sensation, as if he were 
dreaming over his past life, while he stood face to 
face with the old lady’s small soldierly figure and 
listened to the crisp, emphatic tones in which she 
welcomed him back to Botetourt. He remembered 
his frequent visits to her solemn old house, which 
she kept so dark that he had always stumbled over 
the two embroidered ottomans on the parlour 
hearth. He recalled the smell of spices which had hung 
about her storeroom, and the raspberry preserves 
which she had never failed to give him out of a blue 
china jar. 

“Why, my dear, blessed child, it’s such a pleasure 
to have you back!”’ she exclaimed now with an effu- 
sion which he felt to be the outward veil of some 
hidden embarrassment. ‘‘You must come some- 
times and let me talk to you about your mother. I 
knew your mother so well —I was one of her brides- 
maids.”’ 

Seizing his arm in her little firm, clawlike hands, 
she assured him with animation of her delight at his 
return, alluding in a shaking voice to his mother, 
and urging him to come to sit with her whenever 
he could stand the gloom of her empty house. 

“And you will give me raspberry preserves out of 
the blue china jar?”’ he asked, laughing, “and let 
me feed crackers to the green parrot?” 


322 THE ANCIENT LAW 


“What a boy! What a boy!” she returned. “You 
remember everything. The parrot is dead—my 
poor Polly !— but there is a second.” 

Her effusiveness, her volubility, which seemed to 
him to be the result of concealed embarrassment, 
produced in him presently a feeling of distrust, 
almost of resentment, and he remembered the 
next instant that, in his childhood, she had been 
looked upon as a creature of uncontrolled charitable 
impulses. Upon the occasion of his last meeting 
with her was she not hastening upon some minister- 
ing errand to the city gaol? At the casual recollec- 
tion an unreasoning bitterness awoke in his mind; 
her reiterated raptures fell with a strange effect of 
irritation upon his ears; and he knew now that he could 
never bring himself to enter her house again, that he 
could never accept her preserved raspberries out of 
the blue china jar. Her reception of him, he saw, 
was but a part of the general reception of Botetourt. 
Like her the town would be voluble, unnatural, over- 
done in its kindness, hiding within itself a furtive 
constraint as if it addressed its speeches to the sen- 
sitive sufferer from some incurable malady. The very 
tenderness, the exaggerated sympathy in its manner 
would hardly have been different, he understood, if he 
had been recently discharged as harmless, yet half- 
distraught, from an asylum for the insane. 

As the days went on this idea, instead of dissolving, 
became unalterably lodged in his brain. Gradually 
he retreated further and further into himself, until 
the spiritual isolation in which he lived appeared to 


THE LETTER AND THE SPIRIT = 323 


him more and more like the isolation of the prison. 
His figure had become a familiar one in the streets 
of Botetourt, yet he lived bodily among the people 
without entering into their lives or sharing in any 
degree the emotions that moved their hearts. Only 
in periods of sorrow did he go willingly into the 
houses of those of his own class, though he had found 
a way from the beginning to reach the poor, the dis- 
tressed, or the physically afflicted. His tall, slightly 
stooping figure, in its loose black clothes, his dark 
head, with the thick locks of iron gray hair upon the 
temples, his sparkling blue eyes, his bright, almost 
boyish smile, and the peculiar, unforgettable charm 
of his presence — these were the things which those 
in sickness or poverty began to recognise and to look 
for. In his own home he lived, except for the fitful 
tenderness of Alice, as much apart as he felt him- 
self to be in the little town. They were consid- 
erate of him, but their consideration, he knew, con- 
tained an ineradicable suspicion, and in the house as 
outside, he was surrounded by the watchful regard 
that is given to the infirm or the mentally diseased. 
He read this in Lydia’s gently averted eyes; he 
felt it in Richard Ordway’s constrained manner; 
he detected it even in the silent haste with which the 
servants fulfilled his slightest wish. 

His work in his uncle’s office, he had soon found to 
be of the most mechanical character, a mere pretext ° 
to give him daily employment, and he told himself, 
in a moment of bitterness that it was convincing 
proof of the opinion which the older man must hold 


324 THE ANCIENT LAW 


of his honesty or of his mental capacity. It became 
presently little more than a hopeless round to 
him — this morning walk through the sunny 
streets, past the ivied walls of the old church, to the 
clean, varnish scented office, where he sat, until the 
luncheon hour, under the hard, though not unkind, 
eyes of the man who reminded him at every instant 
of his dead father. And the bitterest part of it, after 
all, was that the closer he came to the character of 
Richard Ordway, the profounder grew his respect 
for his uncle’s unwavering professional honour. The 
old man would have starved, he knew, rather than 
have held back a penny that was not legally his own 
or have owed a debt that he felt had begun to weigh, 
however lightly, upon his conscience. Yet this 
lawyer of scrupulous rectitude was the husband, 
his nephew suspected, of a neglected, a wretchedly 
unhappy wife—a small, nervous creature, whom 
he had married, shortly after the death of his first 
wife, some twenty years ago. The secret of this 
unhappiness Daniel had discovered almost by in- 
tuition on the day of his father’s funeral, when he 
had looked up suddenly in the cemetery to find his 
uncle’s wife regarding him with a pair of wonderful, 
pathetic eyes, which seemed to gaze at him sadly 
out of a blue mist. So full of sympathy and under- 
standing was her look that the memory of it had 
returned to him more than a year later, and had 
caused him to stop at her gate one November after- 
noon as he was returning from his office work. After 
an instant’s pause, and an uncertain glance at the 


THE LETTER AND THE SPIRIT 325 


big. brick house with its clean white columns, he as- 
sended the steps and rang the bell for the first time 
since his boyhood. 

The house was one of the most charming in Bot- 
etourt, but as he followed the servant down the hall 
to the library, it seemed to him that all these high, 
imposing walls, with their fine white woodwork, 
enclosed but so much empty space to fill with lone- 
liness. His uncle had no children, and the sad, fair- 
haired little wife appeared to be always alone and 
always suffering. 

She was seated now in a low rocking-chair beside 
the window, and as she turned her head at his en- 
trance, he could see, through the lace curtains, a few 
pale November leaves, which fluttered down from an 
elm tree beside the porch. When she looked at him he 
noticed that her eyes were large and beautiful and 
of a changeable misty colour which appeared now 
gray, now violet. 

‘“‘It is so good of you, Daniel,”’ she said, in a soft, 
grateful voice, removing her work-basket from the 
chair at her side so that he might come within the 
reach of her short-sighted gaze. 

‘“‘T’ve wanted to come ever since I saw you for the 
first time after my return,” he answered cheerfully. 
“Tt is strange, isn’t it?—that I hardly remember you 
when I lived here. You were always ill, were 


you not?”’ 
“Yes, ill almost always,’’ she replied, smiling as 
she met his glance. ‘‘When you were married I 


remember I couldn’t go to the wedding because I 


326 THE ANCIENT LAW 


had been in bed for three months. But that’s all 
over now.”’ she added, fearing to produce in him a 
momentary depression. ‘“‘I am well again, you see, 
so the past does n’t matter.” 

“The past doesn’t matter,’’ he repeated in a low 
voice, struck by the words as if they held more than 
their surface meaning for his ears. 

She nodded gravely. “How can it matter if oneis 
really happy at last.” 

‘*And you are happy at last?’’ 

As he watched her it seemed to him that a-pale 
flame burned in her face, tinging its sallow wanness 
with a golden light. ‘‘I am at peace and is that not 
happiness?’’ she asked. 

‘‘But you were sad once — that day in the cem- 
etery? I felt it.” 

“That was while I was still struggling,’’ she 
answered, ‘‘and it always hurts one to struggle. I 
wanted happiness — I kept on wanting it even after 
I ceased to believe in its existence. I fought very 
hard —oh, desperately hard—but now I have 
. learned that the only way to get anything is to give 
it up. Happiness is like everything else, it is only 
when one gives it back to God that one really 
possesses it’’ 

He had never seen a face in which the soul spoke so 
clearly, and her look rather than her words came to 
him like the touch of divine healing. 

‘‘When I saw you standing beside your father’s 
grave, I knew that you were just where I had been 
for so many years — that you were still telling your 


THE LETTER AND THE SPIRIT 327 


self that things were too hard, that they were unen- 
durable. I had been through it all, you see, so I 
understood.”’ 

‘But how could you know the bitterness, the 
shame of feeling that it was all the result of my own 
mistake — of my own sin.”’ 

Taking his hand in hers, she sat for a moment in 
silence with her ecstatic gaze fixed on his face. ‘‘I 
know that in spite of your sin you are better than they 
are,’ she said at last, ‘‘because your sin was on the 
outside — a thing to be sloughed off and left far be- 
hind, while their self-righteouness is of their very 
souls i 

*‘Oh, hush, hush,’”’ he interrupted sternly, ‘‘they 
have forgiven me for what I did, that is enough.”’ 

‘“‘Sixteen years ago,” she returned, dropping her 
voice, ‘‘my husband forgave me in the same way, 
and he has never forgotten it.’ 

At his start of surprise, he felt that she clung the 
_ more closely to the hand she held. “Oh, it was n’t so 
big a thing,” she went on, ‘‘I had been married to 
him for five years, and I was very unhappy when I 
met someone who seemed to understand and to love 
me. Fora time I was almost insane with the wonder 
and delight of it —I might have gone away with him 
—with the other—in my first rapture, had not 
Richard found it all out two days before. He be- 
haved very generously —he forgave me. I should 
have been happier,’’ she added a little wistfully, 
“if he had not.” 

As she broke off trembling, he lifted her hand 





328 THE ANCIENT LAW 


to his lips, kissing it with tenderness, almost with 
passion. ‘‘Then that was the beginning of your 
unhappiness —of your long illness!’’ he exclaimed. 

She nodded smiling, while a tear ran slowly down 
her flushed cheek. ‘“‘He forgave me sixteen years 
ago and he has never allowed me to forget it one hour 
— hardly a minute since.” 

“Then you understand how bitter — how intoler- 
able it is!’’ he returned in an outbreak of anger. 

“I thought I knew,’’ she replied more firmly 
than he had ever heard her speak, “but I learned 
afterwards that it was a mistake. I see now that 
they are kind—that they are good in their way, 
and I love them for it. It isn’t our way, I know, 
but the essence of charity, after all, is to learn to 
appreciate goodness in all its expressions, no matter 
how different they may be from our own, Even 
Richard is kind — he means everything for the best, 
and it is only his nature that is straightened—that 
is narrow—not his will. I felt bitterly once, but | 
not now because I am so happy at last.” 

Beyond the pale outline of her head, he saw the 
elm leaves drifting slowly down, and beyond them 
the low roofs and the dim church spires of the quiet 
town. Was it possible that even here he might 
find peace in the heart of the storm? 

“It is only since I have given my happiness back 
to God that it is really mine,’’ she said, and it seemed 
to him again that her soul gathered brightness and 
shone in her face. 


CHAPTER V 
THe WILL oF ALICE 


WHEN he reached home the servant who helped 
him out of his overcoat, informed him at the same 
time that his uncle awaited him in the library. With 
the news a strange chill came over him as if he had 
left something warm and bright in the November 
sunset outside. For an instant it seemed to him 
that he must turn back—that he could not go for- 
ward. Then with a gesture of assent, he crossed 
the hall and entered the library, where he found 
Lydia and the children as well as Richard Ordway. 

The lamps were unlit, and the mellow light of the 
sunset fell through the interlacing half-bared boughs 
of the golden poplar beyond the window. This light, 
so rich, so vivid, steeped the old mahogany furniture 
and the faded family portraits in a glow which 
seemed to Daniel to release, for the first time, some 
latent romantic spirit that had dwelt in the room. 
In the midst of this glamor of historic atmosphere, 
the four figures, gathered so closely together against 
the clear space of the window, with its network of 
poplar leaves beyond the panes, borrowed for the 
moment a strange effectiveness of pose, a singular 
intensity of outline. Not only the figures, but the 
very objects by which they were surrounded appeared 
to vibrate in response to a tragic impulse. 

329 


330 THE ANCIENT LAW 


Richard Ordway was standing upon the hearth- 
rug, his fine head and profile limned sharply against 
the pale brown wall at his side. His right hand was 
on Lydia’s shoulder, who sat motionless, as if she 
had fallen there, with her gentle, flower-like head 
lying upon the arm of her son. Before them, as 
before her judges, Alice was drawn to her full height, 
her girlish body held tense and quivering, her splendid 
hair loosened about her forehead, her trembling 
mouth making a violent contrast to the intense 
pallor of her face. 

Right or wrong Ordway saw only that she was 
standing alone, and as he crossed the threshold, he 
turned toward her and held out his hand. 

“‘ Alice,” he said softly, as if the others were not 
present. Without raising her eyes, she shrank from 
him in the direction of Richard Ordway, as if shielding 
herseif behind the iron fortitude of the man whom 
she so bitterly disliked 

“Alice has been out driving alone with Geoffrey 
Heath all the afternoon,” said Lydia in her clear, 
calm voice. ‘‘We had forbidden it, but she says 
that you knew of it and did not object to her going.” 

With the knowledge of the lie, Ordway grew red 
with humiliation, while his gaze remained fastened 
on the figure in the carpet at Alice’s feet. Hecould 
not look at her, for he felt that her shame was scorch- 
ing him like a hot wind. To look at her at the 
moment meant to convict her, and this his heart 
told him he could never do. He was conscious of 
the loud ticking of the ciock, of the regular tapping 


THE WILL OF ALICE 331 


of Richard’s fingers upon the marble mantel-piece, 
of the fading light on the poplar leaves beyond the 
window, and presently of the rapid roll of a carriage 
that went by in the street. Each of these sounds 
produced in him a curious irritation like a physical 
smart, and he felt again something of the dumb 
resentment with which he had entered his wife’s 
dressing-room on the morning of his arrest. Then 
a smothered sob reached his ear, and Alice began to 
tremble from head to foot at his side. Lifting his 
eyes at last, he made a step forward and drew her 
into his arms. 

‘“Was it so very wrong? I am sorry,’ he said to 
Lydia over the bowed head of their child. Until 
the words were uttered, and he felt Alice’s tense 
body relax in his arms, he had not realised that in 
taking sides with her, he was not only making 
himself responsible for her fault, he was, in truth, 
actually sharing in the lie that she had spoken. The 
choice was an unconscious one, yet he knew even 
in the ensuing moment of his clearer judgment that 
it had been inevitable —that from the first instant, 
when he had paused speechless upon the threshold, 
there had been open to him no other course. 

‘“‘T am sorry if it was wrong,’”’ he repeated, turning 
his glance now upon Richard Ordway. 

“Do you know anything of Geoffrey Heath? 
Have you heard him spoken of by decent people 
since you have been in Botetourt?’’ asked the old 
man sternly. 

“IT have heard little of him,’’ answered Daniel, 


332 THE ANCIENT LAW 


“and that little was far from good. We are sorry, 
Alice, are we not? It must not happen again if 
we can help it.” 

‘“‘It has happened before,”’ said Lydia, lifting her 
head from Dick’s arm, where it had lain. ‘“‘It was 
then that I forbade her to see him alone.” 

“T did not know,” responded Daniel, ‘‘but she 
will do as you wish hereafter. Will you not, Alice?”’ 

‘“‘How does it concern them? What have they 
to do with me?’ demanded Alice, turning in his 
arms to face her mother with a defiant and angry 
look, ‘‘they have never cared for me—they have 
always preferred Dick —always, even when I was 
a little child.” 

He saw Lydia grow white and hide her drooping 
face again on Dick’s shoulder. ‘‘You are unjust 
to your mother, Alice,’’ he said gravely, ‘‘she has 
loved you always, and I have loved you.” 

“Oh, youare different —I would die for you!” she 
exclaimed passionately, as she wept on his breast. 

While he stood there holding her in his arms, it 
seemed to him that he could feel like an electric 
current the wave of feeling which had swept Alice 
and himself together. The inheritance which was 
his had descended to her also with its keen joys and 
its sharp anguish. Even the road which he had 
travelled so lately in weariness was the one upon 
which her brave young feet were now set. Not his 
alone, but his child’s also, was this mixture of 


strength and weakness, of gaiety and sadness, of 
bitterness and compassion. 


THE WILL OF ALICE 333 


“Tf you will leave me alone with her, I think I 
can make her understand what you wish,”’ he said, 
lifting his eyes from the dark head on his breast to 
Lydia, who had risen and was standing before him 
with her pensive, inquiring gaze fixed on his face. 
“She is like me,” he added abruptly, ‘in so many 
ways.” 

*“Yes, she is like you, I have always thought so,” 
returned Lydia, quietly. 

““And for that reason, perhaps, you have never 
quite understood her,’’ he responded. 

She bowed her head as if too polite or too indiffer- 
ent to dissent from his words; and then slipping 
her hand through Richard Ordway’s arm, she stood 
waiting patiently while the old man delivered his 
last bit of remonstrance. 

“Try to curb her impulses, Daniel, or you will 
regret it.” 

He went out, still holding Lydia’s hand, and a 
moment afterwards, when Daniel looked up at the 
sound of the hall door closing quickly, he saw that 
Dick also had vanished, and that he was alone in the 
library with Alice, who still sobbed on his breast. 

A few moments before it had seemed to him that 
he needed only to be alone with her to make all 
perfectly clear between them. But when the others 
had passed out, and the door had closed at last on 
the empty silence in which they stood, he found that 
the words which he had meant to utter had van- 
ished hopelessly from his mind. He had said to 
Lydia that Alice was like himself, but there had never 


334 THE ANCIENT LAW 


been an hour in his life when his hatred of a lie had 
not been as intense, aS uncompromising, as it was 
to-day. And this lie which she had spoken appeared 
to divide them now like a drawn sword. 

‘“‘Alice,” he said, breaking with an effort through 
the embarrassment which had held him speechless, 
‘“‘will you give me your word of honour that you 
will never tell me a falsehood again?” 

She stirred slightly in his arms, and he felt her 
body grow soft and yielding. ‘‘I didn’t to you,” 
she answered, ‘“‘oh, I would n’t to you.”’ 

‘““Not to the others then. Will you promise?’ 

Her warm young arm tightened about his neck. 
“‘T didn’t mean to—I didn’t mean to,” she protested 
between her sobs, ‘‘but they forced me to doit. It 
was more than half their fault—they are so—so 
hateful! I tried to think of something else, but there 
was nothing to say, and I knew you would stand by 
me-——"’ 

“You have almost broken my heart,’’ he answered, 
“for you have lied, Alice, you have lied.” 

She lifted her head and the next instant he felt 
her mouth on his cheek, ‘‘I wish I were dead! I have 
hurt you and I wish I were dead!’’ she cried. 

“It is not hurting me that I mind — you may do 
that and welcome. It is hurting yourself, my child, 
my Alice,’’ he answered; and pressing her upturned 
face back on his arm, he bent over her in an ecstasy 
of emotion, calling her his daughter, his darling, 
the one joy of his life. The iron in his nature had 
melted beneath her warm touch, and he felt again 


THE WILL OF ALICE 335 


the thrill, half agony, half rapture, with which he 
had received her into his arms on the day of her 
birth. That day was nearer to him now than was the 
minute in which he stood, and he could trace still 
the soft, babyish curves in the face which nestled 
so penitently on his arm. His very fear for her 
moved him into a deeper tenderness, and the appeal 
she made to him now was one with the appeal of 
her infancy, for its power lay in her weakness, not 
in her strength. 

‘‘Be truthful with me, Alice,” he said, ‘‘and re- 
member that nothing can separate me from you.’’ 

An hour later when he parted from her and went 
upstairs, he heard Lydia’s voice calling to him 
through her half open door, and turning obediently, 
he entered her bedroom for the first time since the 
night of his return. Now as then the luxury, the 
softness, of his wife’s surroundings produced in him 
a curious depression, an enervation of body; and 
he stood for an instant vainly striving to close his 
nostrils against the delicious perfume which floated 
from her lace-trimmed dressing-table. 

Lydia, still in her light mourning gown, was stand- 
ing, when he entered, before a little marquetry desk 
in one corner, her eyes on an open letter which she 
appeared to have left partially unread. 

‘“‘T wanted to tell you, Daniel,’’ she began at once, 
approaching the point with a directness which left 
him no time to wonder as to the purpose of her sum- 
mons, ‘‘that Alice’s intimacy with Geoffrey Heath 
has already been commented upon in Botetourt. 


336 THE ANCIENT LAW 


Cousin Paulina has actuaily written to me for an 
explanation.”’ 

“‘Cousin Paulina?’ he repeated vaguely, and re- 
membered immediately that the lady in question 
was his wife’s one rich relation— an elderly female 
who was greatly respected for her fortune, which 
she spent entirely in gratifying her personal passion 
for trinkets. ‘Oh, yes,’’ he added flippantly, ‘‘the 
old lady who used to lock like a heathen idol got 
up for the sacrifice.” 

He felt that his levity was out of place, yet he 
went on rashly because he knew that he was doomed 
forever to appear at a disadvantage in Lydia’s 
presence. She would never believe in him— his 
best motives would wear always to her the covering 
of hypocrisy; and the very hopelessness of ever 
convincing her goaded him at times into the reckless 
folly of despair. 

“‘She writes me that people are talking of it,” 
she resumed, sweetly, as if his untimely mirth had 
returned still-born into the vacancy from which it 
emerged. 

‘““Who is this Geoffrey Heath you speak of so 
incessantly?’’ he demanded. “There was a Heath, 
I remember, who had a place near us in the country, 
and kept a barroom or a butcher’s shop or something 
in town.” 

‘“That was the father,’ replied Lydia, with a shud- 
der which deepened the slightly scornful curve 
of her lip. “He was a respectable old man, I 
believe, and made his fortune quite honestly, how- 


THE WILL OF ALICE 337 


ever it was. It was only after his son began to grow 
up that he became socially ambitious ie 

“And is that all you have against him?” 

‘Oh, there’s nothing against the old man — nothing 
at least except the glaring bad taste he showed in 
that monstrous house he built in Henry Street. 
He’s dead now, you know.”’ 

‘““Then the son has all the money and the house, 
too, has n’t he?’’ 

‘All he has n’t wasted, yes.” 

As she spoke she subsided into a chair, with a 
graceful, eddying motion of her black chiffon draper- 
ies, and continued the conversation with an expres- 
sion of smiling weariness. All her attitudes were 
effective, and he was struck, while he stood, em- 
barrassed and awkward, before her, by the plain- 
tive grace that she introduced into her smallest 
gesture. Though he was aware that he saw her now 
too clearly for passion, the appeal of her delicate 
fairness went suddenly to his head. 

“Then there’s not much to be said for the chap, 
I suppose?” he asked abruptly, fearing the pro- 
longed strain of the silence. 

“Very little for him, but a good deal about him, 
according to Cousin Paulina. It seems that three 
years ago he was sent away from the University for 
something disgraceful — cheating at cards, I believe; 
and since then he has been conspicuous chiefly be- 
cause of his low associations. How Alice met him, 
I could never understand — I can’t understand now.” 

‘And do you think she cares for him—that she 





338 THE ANCIENT LAW 


even imagines that she does?’”’ he demanded, while 
his terror rose in his throat and choked back his 
words. 

““She will not confess it — how could she?”’ replied 
Lydia wearily, ‘“‘I believe it is only wildness, reck- 
lessness, lack of discipline that prompts her. Yet 
he is good-looking —in a vulgar way,’ she added 
in disgust, ‘‘and Alice has always seemed to like 
vulgar things.” 

Her eyes rested on him, not directly, but as if 
they merely included him in their general pensive 
survey of the world; yet he read the accusation in 
her gentle avoidance of his gaze as plainly as she 
had uttered in it her clear, flute-like tones. 

“It is very important,’’ she went on, “that she 
should be curbed in her impulses, in her extravagance. 
Already her bills are larger than mine and yet she 
is never satisfied with the amount of her allowance. 
We can do nothing with her, Uncle Richard and I, 
but she seems to yield, in a measure, to your influence, 
and we thought — we hoped i 

“‘T will —I will,’ heanswered. ‘I will give my life 
to help her if need be. But Lydia,’’ he broke out 
more earnestly, “‘you must stand by and aid me for 
her sake, for the sake of our child, we must work 
together 

Half rising in her chair, she looked at him fix- 
edly a moment, while he saw her pupils dilate almost 
as if she were in physical fear. 

“‘But what can I do? I have done all I could,” 
she protested, with an injured look. By this look, 








THE WILL OF ALICE 339 


without so much as a gesture, she put the space of 
the whole room between them. ‘The corners of her 
mouth quivered and drooped, and he watched the 
pathos creep back into her light blue eyes. ‘I have 
given up my whole life to the children since — 
since ——”’ 

She broke off in a frightened whisper, but the un- 
finished sentence was more expressive than a volley 
of reproaches would have been. There was some- 
thing in her thoughts too horrible to put into words, 
and this something of which she could not bring her- 
self to speak, would have had no place in her exist- 
ence except for him. He felt cowed suddenly, as 
if he had been physically beaten and thrust aside. 

“You have been very brave —I know—I ap- 
preciate it all,’’ he said, and while he spoke he drew 
away from her until he stood with his back against 
one of the amber satin curtains. Instinctively he put 
out his hand for support, and as it closed over the 
heavy draperies, he felt that the hard silken texture 
made his flesh creep. The physical sensation, brief as 
it was, recalled in some strange way the effect upon 
him of Lydia’s smooth and shining surface when he 
had knelt before her on the night of his home- 
coming. Yet it was with difficulty even now that he 
could free himself from the conviction that her 
emotional apathy was but one aspect of innocence. 
Would he admit to-day that what he had once wor- 
shipped as purity of soul was but the frost of an 
unnatural coldness of nature? All at once, as he 
looked at her, he found himself reminded by her caim 


340 THE ANCIENT LAW 


forehead, her classic features, of the sculptured front 
of a marble tomb which he had seen in some foreign 
gallery. Was there death, after all, not life hidden for 
him in her plaintive beauty? The next instant, as 
he watched her, he told himself that such questions 
belonged to the evil promptings of his own nature. 

“*T realise all that you have been, all that you have 
suffered,’’ he said at last, aware that his words 
sounded hysterical in the icy constraint which sur- 
rounded them. 

When his speech was out, his embarrassment be- 
came so great that he found himself presently measur- 
ing the distance which divided him from the closed 
door. With a last effort of will, he went toward her 
and stretched out his hand in a gesture that was 
almost one of entreaty. 

““Lydia,” he asked, “‘is it too painful for you to 
have me here? Would it be any better for you if 
I went away?’”’ 

As he moved toward her she bent over with a 
nervous, mechanical movement to arrange her train, 
and before replying to his question, she laid each 
separate fold in place. ‘‘Why, by no means,’’ she 
answered, looking up with her conventional smile. 
*‘It would only mean — would n’t it? — that people 
would begin to wonder all over again?”’ 


CHAPTER VI 
THE IRon Bars 


As THE days went on it seemed to him that his 
nature, repressed in so many other directions, was 
concentrated at last in a single channel of feeling. 
The one outlet was his passion for Alice, and nothing 
that concerned her was too remote or too trival to en- 
gross him—her clothes, her friendships, the particular 
chocolate creams for which she had once expressed a 
preference. To fill her life with amusements that 
would withdraw her erring impulses from Geoffrey 
Heath became for a time his absorbing purpose. 

At first he told himself in a kind of rapture that 
success was apparent in his earliest and slightest 
efforts. For weeks Alice appeared to find interest 
and animation in his presence. She flattered, scolded, 
caressed and tyrannised, but with each day, each 
hour, she grew nearer his heart and became more 
firmly interwoven into his life. 

Then suddenly a change came over her, and one 
day when she had been kissing him with ‘‘ butterfly 
kisses’”’ on his forehead, he felt her suddenly grow 
restless and draw back impatiently as if seeking a 
fresh diversion. A bored look had come into her 
eyes and he saw the three little wrinkles gather 
between her eyebrows. 

341 


342 THE ANCIENT LAW 


*‘ Alice,” he said, alarmed by the swift alteration, 
“are you tired of the house? Shall we ride together?”’ 

She shook her head, half pettishly, half playfully, 
“I can’t— I’ve an engagement,’’ she responded. 

““An engagement?” he repeated inquiringly. 
“Why, I thought we were always to ride when it 
was fair.”’ 

‘“‘I promised one of the girls to go to tea with her,” 
she repeated, after a minute. ‘‘It isn’t a real tea, 
but she wanted to talk to me, so I said I would go.”’ 

“Well, I’m glad you did — don’t give up the girls,”’ 
he answered, relieved at once by the explanation. 

In the evening when she returned, shortly after 
dark, ‘“‘one of the girls” as she called laughingly 
from the library, had come home for the night with - 
her. Ordway heard them chatting gayly together, 
but, when he went in for a moment before going up- 
stairs to dress, they lapsed immediately into an 
embarrassed silence. Alice’s visitor was a pretty, 
gray-eyed, flaxen-haired young woman named Jenny 
Lane, who smiled in a frightened way and answered 
““Yes —no,’’ when he spoke to her, as if she offered 
him the choice of his favourite monosyllable from 
her lips. Clearly the subject which animated them 
was one in which, even as Alice’s father, he could 
have no share. 

For weeks after this it seemed to him that a silence 
fell gradually between them—that silence of the heart 
which is so much more oppressive than the mere out- 
ward silence of the lips. It was not, he told himself 
again and again, that there had come a perceptible 


THE IRON BARS 343 


changeinhermanner. She still met him at breakfast 
with her flower and her caress, still flung herself into 
his arms at unexpected moments, still coaxed and up- 
braided in her passionate, childish voice. Neverthe- 
less, the difference was there, and he recognised it 
with a pang even while he demanded of himself in 
what breathless suspension of feeling it could consist? 
Her caresses were as frequent, but the fervour, the 
responsiveness, had gone out of them; and he was 
brought at last face to face with the knowledge that 
her first vivid delight in him had departed forever. 
The thing which absorbed her now was a thing in 
which he had no share, no recognition; and true to 
her temperament, her whole impulsive being had 
directed itself into this new channel. ‘She is young 
and it is only natural that she should wish to have 
her school friends about her,”’ he thought with a smile. 

In the beginning it had been an easy matter to 
efface his personality and stand out of the way of 
Alice’s life, but as the weeks drew on into months 
and the months into a year, he found that he had 
been left aside not only by his daughter, but by the 
rest of the household as well. In his home he felt 
himself to exist presently in an ignored, yet obvious 
way like a familiar piece of household furniture, 
which is neither commented upon nor wilfully over- 
looked. It would have occasioned, he supposed, 
some vague exclamations of surprise had he failed 
to appear in his proper place at the breakfast table, 
but as long as his accustomed seat was occupied all 
further use for his existence seemed at anend. He 


344 THE ANCIENT LAW 


was not necessary, he was not even enjoyed, but he 
was tolerated. 

Before this passive indifference, which was worse 
to him than direct hostility, he found that his sym- 
pathies, his impulses, and even his personality, 
were invaded by an apathy that paralysed the very 
sources of his will. He beheld himself as the cause 
of the gloom, the suspicion, the sadness, that sur- 
rounded him, and as the cause, too, of Alice’s wild- 
nessand of the pathetic loneliness in which Lydia lived. 
But for him, he told himself, there would have been 
no shadow upon the household; and his wife’s 
pensive smile was like a knife in his heart whenever 
he looked up from his place at the table and met 
it unawares. At Tappahannock he had sometimes 
believed that his past was a skeleton which he had 
left behind; here he had grown, as the years went 
by, to think of it as a coffin which had shut over him 
and from which there was no escape. And with 
_ the realisation of this, a blighting remorse, a painful 
humbleness awoke in his soul, and was revealed 
outwardly in his face, in his walk, in his embarrassed 
movements. As he passed up and down the stair- 
case, he went softly lest the heavy sound of his 
footsteps should become an annoyance to Lydia’s 
sensitive ears. His manner lost its boyish freedom 
and grew awkward and nervous, and when he gave 
an order to the servants it seemed to him that a 
dreadful timidity sounded in his voice. He began 
to grow old suddenly in a year, before middle age 
had as yet had time to soften the way. 


THE IRON BARS 345 


Looking in the glass one morning, when he had 
been less than three years in Botetourt, he discovered 
that the dark locks upon his forehead had turned 
almost white, and that his shoulders were losing 
gradually their youthful erectness of carriage. And 
it seemed to him that the courage with which he 
might have once broken away and begun anew had - 
departed from him in this new and paralysing humil- 
ity, which was like the humility of a helpless and 
burdensome old age. 

After a day of peculiar loneliness, he was returning 
from Richard’s office on this same afternoon, when 
a voice called to him from beneath the fringed linen 
cover of a little phaeton which had driven up to the 
crossing. Turning in surprise he found Aunt Lucy 
holding the reins over a fat pony, while she sat very 
erect, with her trim, soldierly figure emerging from 
a mountain of brown-paper parcels. 

“This is the very chance I’ve been looking for, 
Daniel Ordway!” she exclaimed, in her emphatic 
voice. “Do you know, sir, that you have not 
entered my house once in the last three years?’’ 

“Yes,” he replied, “‘I know — but the fact is that 
I have hardly been anywhere since I came back.”’ 

*“And why is that?” she demanded sharply. 

He shook his head, “I don’t know. Perhaps you 
can tell me.” 

“Yes, I can tell you,”’ she snapped back, with a 
rudeness which, in some singular way, seemed to 
him kinder than the studied politeness that he had 
met. “It’s because, in spite of all you’ve gone 


346 THE ANCIENT LAW 


through, you are still more than half a fool, Daniel 
Ordway.” 

‘Oh, you’re right, I dare say,’ he acknowledged 
bitterly. 

With a frown, which struck him curiously as the 
wrong side of a smile, she nodded her head while 
she made room for him among the brown-paper 
parcels on the low linen covered seat of the phaeton. 
‘Come in here, I want to talk to you,” she said, 
‘‘there’s a little matter about which I should like 
your help.’’ 

‘‘My help?” he repeated in astonishment, as a 
sensation of pleasure shot through his heart. It 
was so seldom that anybody asked his help in Bote- 
tourt. ‘‘Is the second green parrot dead, and do 
you want me to dig the grave?” he inquired, check- 
ing his unseemly derision as he met her warning 
glance. 

‘“‘Polly is perfectly well,’’ she returned, rapping 
him smartly upon the knee with her little tightly 
closed black fan which she carried as if it were a 
baton, ‘‘but I do not like Richard Ordway.”’ 

The suddenness of her announcement, following 
so inappropriately her comment upon the health 
of the green parrot, caused him to start from his 
seat in the amazement with which he faced her. 
Then he broke into an echo of his old boyish merri- 
ment, ‘‘ You don’t?’ he retorted flippantly. ‘‘ Well, 
Lydia does.” : 

Her eyes blinked rapidly in the midst of her 
wrinkled little face, and bending over she flicked 


THE IRON BARS. 347 


the back of the fat pony gently with the end of the 
whip. “Oh, I’m not sure I like Lydia,’ she re- 
sponded, ‘“‘though, of course, Lydia is a saint.”’ 

‘“Yes, Lydia is a saint,” he affirmed. 

“Well, I’m not talking about Lydia,” she resumed 
presently, “‘though there’s something I’ve always 
had a burning curiosity to find out.’’ For an instant 
she held back, and then made her charge with a kind 
of desperate courage. ‘‘Is she really a saint?’ 
she questioned “‘or is it only the way that she wears 
her hair?” | 

Her question was so like the spoken sound of his 
own dreadful suspicion that it took away his breath 
completely, while he stared at her with a gasp that 
was evenly divided between a laugh and a groan. 

‘‘Oh, she’s a saint, there’s no doubt of that,’’ he 
insisted loyally. 

“Then I ’ll let her rest,’’ she replied, “and I’m glad, 
heaven knows, to have my doubts at an end. But 
where do you imagine that I am taking you?” 

“For a drive, I hope,’’ he answered, smiling. 

“It’s not,’ she rejoined grimly, ‘“‘it’s for a visit.” 

““A visit?’ he repeated, starting up with the im- 
pulse to jump over the moving wheel, ‘‘but I never 
visit.”’ 

She reached out her wiry little fingers, which 
clung like a bird’s claw, and drew him by force back 
upon the seat. 

“T am taking you to see Adam Crowley,’’ she 
explained, ‘‘do you remember him?’ 

“Crowley ?’’ he repeated the name as he searched 


348 THE ANCIENT LAW 


his memory. ‘‘ Why, yes, he was my father’s clerk 
for forty years, wasn’t he? I asked when I came home 
what had become of him. So he is still living?” 

‘““He was paralysed in one arm some years ago, 
and it seems he has lost all his savings in some in- 
vestment your father had advised him to make. 
Of .course, there was no legal question of a debt to 
him, but until the day your father died he had always 
made ample provision for the old man’s support. 
Crowley had always believed that the allowance 
would be continued — that there would be a mention 
made of him in the will.” 

‘‘And there was none?”’ : 

“It was an oversight, Crowley is still convinced, 
for he says he had a distinct promise.” 

‘“‘Then surely my uncle will fulfil the trust? He 
is an honourable man.” 

She shook her head. “I don’t know that he is 
so much ‘honourable’ as he is ‘lawful.’ The written 
obligation is the one which binds him like steel, 
but I don’t think he cares whether a thing is right 
or wrong, just or unjust, as long as it is the law. 
The letter holds him, but I doubt if he has ever 
even felt the motion of the spirit. If he ever felt — 
it,’ she concluded with grim humour, “he would 
probably try to drive it out with quinine.” 

‘“‘Are we going there now—to see Crowley, I 
mean ?’’ 

“Tf you don’t mind. Of course there may be 
nothing that you can do—but I thought that you 
might, perhaps, speak to Richard about it.” 








THE IRON BARS 349 


He shook his head, ‘No, I can’t speak to my 
uncle, though I think you are unjust to him,” he 
answered, after a pause in which the full joy of her 
appeal had swept through his heart, ‘‘but ] have an 
income of my own, you know, and out of this, I can 
help Crowley.” 

For an instant she did not reply, and he felt her 
thin, upright little figure grow rigid at his side. 
Then turning with a start, she laid her hand, in its 
black lace mitten, upon his knee. 

‘‘QO my boy, you are your mother all over again!”’ 
she said. 

After this they drove on in silence down one of 
the shaded streets, where rows of neat little houses, 
packed together like pasteboard boxes, were divided 
from the unpaved sidewalks by low whitewashed 
fences. At one of these doors the phaeton presently 
drew up, and dropping the reins on the pony’s back, 
Aunt Lucy alighted with a bound between the 
wheels, and began with Ordway’s help, to remove 
the paper parcels from the seat. When their arms 
were full, she pushed open the gate, and led him 
up the short walk to the door where an old man, 
wearing a, knitted shawl, sat in an invalid’s chair 
beyond the threshold. At the sound of their foot- 
steps Crowley turned on them a cheerful wrinkled 
face which was brightened by a pair of twinkling 
black eyes that gave him an innocent and merry 
look. 

“T knew you ’d come around,” he said, smiling 
with his toothless mouth like an amiable infant. 


350 THE ANCIENT LAW 


““Matildy has been complaining that the coffee gave 
out at breakfast, but I said ’t was only a sign that 
you were coming. Everything bad is the sign of 
something good, that’s what I say.” 

““T ’ve brought something better than coffee to-day, 
Adam,” replied Aunt Lucy, seating herself upon the 
doorstep. ‘“‘This is Daniel Ordway —do you re- 
member him?” 

The old man bent forward, without moving 
his withered hand, which lay outstretched on the 
cushioned arm of the chair, and it seemed to 
Ordway that the smiling black eyes pierced to his 
heart. ‘‘Oh, I remember him, I remember him,” 
said Crowly, ‘poor boy — poor boy.” 

‘““He’s come back now,” rejoined Aunt Lucy, 
taising her voice, ‘‘and he has come to see you.” 

“He ’s like his mother,”’ remarked Crowley, almost 
in a whisper, ‘‘and I’m glad of that, though his father 
was a good man. But there are some good people 
who do more harm than bad ones,”’ he added, ‘‘and 
I always knew that old Daniel Ordway would ruin 
his son.”” A chuckle broke from him, “but your 
mother: I can see her now running out bareheaded 
in the snow to scold me for not having on my over- 
coat. She was always seeing with other people’s 
eyes, bless her, and feeling with other people’s bodies.”’ 

Dropping upon the doorstep, Ordway replaced the 
knitted shawl which had slipped from the old man’s 
shoulder. ‘‘I wonder how it is that you keep so happy 
in spite of everything?’’ he said. 

‘““Happy?’”’ repeated Crowley withalaugh. ‘Well, 


THE IRON BARS Kit? 


I don’t know, but I am not complaining. I ’ve seen 
men who had n’t an ache in their bodies, who were 
worse off than I am to-day. I tell you it isn’t the 
thing that comes to you, but the way you look at 
it that counts, and because you ’ve got a paralysed 
arm is no reason that you should have a paralysed 
heart as well. I’ve had a powerful lot of suffering, 
but I’ve had a powerful lot of happiness, too, and 
the suffering somehow, does n’t seem to come inside 
of me to stay as the happiness does. You see, I’m 
a great believer in the Lord, sir,” he added simply, 
“‘and what I can’t understand, I don’t bother about, 
but just take on trust.’’ All the cheerful wrinkles 
of his face shone peacefully as he talked. ‘It’s 
true there ’ve been times when things have gone so 
hard I ’ve felt that I ’d just let go and drop down to. 
the bottom, but the wonderful part is that when 
you get to the bottom there’s still something down 
below you. It’s when you fall lowest that you feel 
most the Lord holding you up. It may be that there 
ain’t any bottom after all but I know if there is one 
the Lord is surely waiting down there to catch you 
when you let go. He ain’t only there, I reckon, 
but He’s in ali the particular hard places on earth 
much oftener than He’s up in His heaven. He 
knows the poorhouse, you may be sure, and Hell 
be there to receive me and tell me it ain’t so bad as 
it looks. I don’t want to get there, but if I do it will 
come a bit easier to think that the Lord has been 
there before me a 

The look in his smiling, toothless face brought to 





352 THE ANCIENT LAW 


Ordway, as he watched him, the memory of the 
epileptic little preacher who had preached in the 
prison chapel. Here, also, was that untranslatable 
rapture of the mystic, which cannot be put into 
words though it passes silently in its terrible joy from 
the heart of the speaker to the other heart that is 
waiting. Again he felt his whole being dissolve in 
the emotion which had overflowed his eyes that Sun- 
day when he was a prisoner. He remembered the 
ecstasy with which he had said to himself on that 
day: “I have found the key!” and he knew now that 
this ecstasy was akin to the light that had shone for 
him while he sat on the stage of the town hall in 
Tappahanneck. A chance word from the lips of a 
doting old man, who saw the doors of the poorhouse 
swing open to receive him, had restored to Ordway, 
with a miraculous clearness, the vision that he had 
' lost; and he felt suddenly that the hope with which 
he had come out of the prison had never really 
suffered disappointment or failure. 








CHAPTER VII 


THE VISION AND THE FAcT 


As HE walked home along one of the side streets,. 
shaded by an irregular row of flowering linden trees, 
it appeared to him that his life in Botetourt, so unen- 
durable an hour before, had been rendered suddenly 
easy by a miracle, not in his surroundings, but in 
himself. His help had been asked, and in the act of 
giving there had flowed back into his heart the , 
strength by which he might live his daily life. His 
unrest, his loneliness, his ineffectiveness, showed to 
him now as the result of some fatal weakness in his. 
own nature — some failure in his personal attitude to 
the people among whom he lived. 

Straight ahead of him a fine white dust drifted 
down from the blossoming lindens, lying like powder 
on the roughly paved street, where the wind blew it 
in soft swirls and eddies against the crumbling stone 
steps which led down from the straight doorways of 
the old-fashioned houses. The boughs overhead. 
made a green arch through which the light fell, and 
it was under this thick tent of leaves, that, looking 
up presently, he saw Emily Brooke coming toward 
him. Not until she was so close to him that he 
could hear the rustle of her dress, did she lift her 
eyes from the pavement and meet his cry of welcome 
with a look of joyful surprise. 

S53 


354 THE ANCIENT LAW 


‘““Emily!’’ he cried, and at his voice, she stretched 
out her hand and stood smiling at him with the 
soft and animated gaze which, it seemed to him now, 
he had but dimly remembered. The thought of 
her had dwelt as a vision in his memory, yet he knew, 
as he looked into her face, that the ideal figure had 
lacked the charm, the radiance, the sparkling eneigy, 
of the living substance. 

‘““So you came to Botetourt and did not send me 
word,” he said. 

“No, I did not send you word,’’ she answered, 
“‘and now I am leaving within an hour.’ 

“‘And you would have gone without seeing me?’’ 

For an instant she hesitated, and he watched the 
joy in her face melt into a sorrowful tenderness. 
“IT knew that you were well and I was satisfied. 
Would it have been kind to appear to you like an 
arisen ghost of Tappahannock?”’ 

“The greatest kindness,’ he answered gravely, 
“‘that you—or anyone could do me.’ 

She shook her head: ‘‘ Kindness or not, I found 
that I could not do it.” 

“‘And you go in an hour?” 

‘““My train leaves at seven o’clock. Is it nearly 
that?’ 

He drew out his watch, a mechanical action which 
relieved the emotional tension that stretched like 
a drawn cord between them. “It is not yet six. 
Will you walk a little way with me down this street? 
There is stili time.” 

As she nodded silently, they turned and went 


THE VISION AND THE FACT 355, 


back along the side street, under the irregular rows 
of lindens, in the direction from which he had come. 

‘“‘One of the girls I used to teach sent for me when. 
she was dying,’’ she said presently, as if feeling 
the need of some explanation of her presence in 
Botetourt. ‘‘That was three days ago and the 
funeral was yesterday. It is a great loss to me, 
for I have n’t so many friends that I can spare the 
few I love.” 

He made no answer to her remark, and in the 
silence that followed, he felt, with a strange ache 
at his heart, that the distance that separated them 
was greater than it had been when she was in Tap- 
pahannock and he in Botetourt. Then there had 
stretched only the luminous dream spaces between 
their souls; now they stood divided by miles and 
miles of an immovable reality. Was it possible that 
in making her a part of his intense inner life, he had 
lost, in a measure, his consciousness of her actual 
existence? Then while the vision still struggled 
blindly against the fact, she turned toward him 
with a smile which lifted her once more into the 
shining zone of spirits. 

“If I can feel that you are happy, that you are 
at peace, I shall ask nothing more of God,” she 
said. 

“IT am happy to-day,”’ he answered, “‘but if you 
had come yesterday, I should have broken down in 
my weakness. Oh, I have been homesick for Tap- 
pahannock since I came away!” 

“Yet Botetourt is far prettier to my eyes.”’ 


356 THE ANCIENT LAW 


“To mine also— but it isn’t beauty, it is useful- 
ness that I need. For the last two years I have 
told myself night and day that I had no place and 
no purpose — that I was the stone that the builders 
rejected.” 

“And it is different now?”’ 

‘Different? Yes, I feel as if I had been shoved 
suddenly into a place where I fitted— as if I were 
meant, after all, to help hold things together. And 
the change came—how do you think?” he asked, 
smiling. ‘“‘A man wanted money of me to keep 
him out of the poorhouse.”’ 

The old gaiety was in his voice, but as she looked 
at him a ray of faint sunshine fell on his face through 
a parting in the leaves overhead, and she saw for the 
first time how much older he had grown since that 
last evening in Tappahannock. The dark hair was 
all gray now, the lines of the nose were sharper, the 
cheek bones showed higher above the bluish hollows 
beneath. Yet the change which had so greatly aged 
him had deepened the peculiar sweetness in the 
curves of his mouth, and this sweetness, which was 
visible also in his rare smile, moved her heart to a 
tenderness which was but the keener agony of re- 
nouncement. 

‘““T know how it is,’’ she said slowly, “just as in. 
_ Tappahannock you found your happiness in giving 
yourself to others, so you will find it here.” 

“Tf I can only be of use — perhaps.”’ 

‘You can be— you will be. What you were with 
us, you wiil be again.” 


b 


THE YISION AND THE FACT 357 


“Yet it was different. There I had your help, 
hadn’t I?” 

“And you shall have it here,” she responded, 
brightly, though he saw that her eyes were dim 
with tears. 

“Will you make me a promise?’’ he asked, stop- 
ping suddenly before some discoloured stone steps 
‘“‘will you promise me that if ever you need a friend 
—a strong arm, a brain to think for you—you will 
send me word?” 

She looked at him smiling, while her tears fell 
from her eyes. “I will make no promise that is not 
for your sake as well as for mine,” she answered. 

“But it is for my sake —it is for my happiness.” 

““Then I will promise,” she rejoined gravely, ‘‘and 
I will keep it.” 

“I thank you,” he responded, taking the hand that 
she held out. 

At his words she had turned back, pausing a mo- 
ment in her walk, as if she had.caught from his voice 
or his look a sense of finality in their parting. ‘‘I 
have but a few minutes left,’’ she said, ‘‘so 1 must 
walk rapidly back or I shall be late.”’ 

Asudden clatter of horses’ hoofs onthe cobblestones 
in the street caused them to start away from each 
other, and turning his head, Ordway saw Alice gallop 
furiously past him with Geoffrey Heath at her side. 

‘““How beautiful!’’ exclaimed Emily beneath her 
breath, for Alice as she rode by had looked back for 
an instant, her glowing face framed in blown masses 
of hair. 


358 THE ANCIENT LAW 


“Yes, she is beautiful,” he replied, and added 
after a moment as they walked on, “she is my 
daughter.”’ 

Her face brightened witn pleasure. ‘Then you 
are happy — you must be happy,” she said. ‘‘ Why, 
she looked like Brunhilde.”’ 

For a moment he hesitated. ‘‘ Yes,’’ he answered 
at last, ‘“‘she is very beautiful —and I am happy.” 

After this they did not speak again until they 
reached the iron gate before the house in which she 
was staying. On his side he was caught up into 
some ideal realm of feeling, in which he possessed 
her so utterly that the meeting could not bring her 
nearer to him nor the parting take her farther away. 
His longing, his unrest, and his failure, were a part 
of his earthly nature which he seemed to have left 
below him in that other life from which hehadescaped. 
Without doubt he would descend to it again, as he 
had descended at moments back into the body of 
his sin; but in the immediate exaltation of his mood, 
his love had passed the bounds of personality and 
entered into a larger and freer world. When they 
parted, presently, after a casual good-bye, he could 
persuade himself, almost without effort, that she 
went on with him in the soft May twilight. 

At his door he found Lydia just returning froma 
drive, and taking her wraps from her arm, he ascended 
the steps and entered the house at her side. She 
had changed her mourning dress for a gown of pale 
gray cloth, and he noticed at once that her beauty 
had lost in transparency and become more human. 


THE VISION AND THE FACT 359 


“TI thought you had gone riding with Alice,’”’ she 
said without looking at him, as she stooped to gather 
up the ends of a lace scarf which had slipped from 
her arm. 

“No, I was not with her,’”’ he answered. “I 
wanted to go, but she would not let me.”’ 

‘‘ Are you sure, then, that she was not with Geoffrey 
Heath?”’ 

‘“‘T am sure that she was with him, for they passed 
me not a half hour ago as I came up.” 

They had entered the library while he spoke, and 
crossing to the hearth, where a small fire burned, 
Lydia looked up at him with her anxious gaze. “I 
hoped at first that you would gain some influence 
over her,’’ she said, in a distressed voice, ‘‘but it 
seems now that she is estranged even from you.” 

‘‘Not estranged, but there is a difference and I 
am troubled by it. She is young, you see, and I 
am but a dull and sober companion for her.’’ 

She shook her head with the little hopeless ges- 
ture which was so characteristic of her. Only yes- 
terday this absence of resolution, the discontented 
droop of her thin, red lips, had worked him into a 
feeling of irritation against her. But his vision of 
her to-day had passed through some softening lens; 
and he saw her shallowness, her vanity, her lack of 
passion, as spiritual infirmities which were not less 
to be pitied than an infirmity of the body. 

‘““‘The end is not yet, though,’’ he added cheer- 
fully after a moment, ‘and she will come back to 
me in time when I am able really to help her.” 


360 THE ANCIENT LAW 


‘‘Meanwhile is she to be left utterly uncontrolled?” 

“Not if we can do otherwise. Only we must go 
quietly and not frighten her too much.” 

Again she met his words with the resigned, hope- 
less movement of her pretty head in its pearl gray 
bonnet. ‘‘I have done all I can,’ she said, ‘‘and it 
has been worse than useless. Now you must try if 
your method is better than mine.” 

‘‘T am trying,’ he answered smiling. 

For an instant her gaze fluttered irresolutely over 
him, as if she were moved by a passing impulse 
to a deeper utterance. That this impulse concerned 
Alice he was vaguely aware, for when had his wife 
ever spoken to him upon a subject more directly 
personal? Apart from their children he knew there 
was no bond between them — no memories, no hopes, 
no ground even for the building of a common interest. 
Lydia adored her children, he still believed, but when 
there wasnothingfurther to be said of Dick or of Alice, 
their conversation flagged upon the most trivial topics. 
Upon the few unfortunate occasions when he had 
attempted to surmount the barrier between them, 
she had appeared to dissolve, rather than to retreat, 
before his approach. Yet despite her soft, cloud- 
like exterior, he had discovered that the rigour of her 
repulsion had hardened to a vein of iron in her nature. 
What must her life be, he demanded in a sudden 
passion of pity, when the strongest emotion she had 
ever known was the aversion that she now felt 
to him? All the bitterness in his heart melted 
into compassion at the thought, and he resisted an 


THE VISION AND THE FACT 361 


impulse to take her into his arms and say: “I know, 
I understand, and I am sorry.’ Yet he was perfectly 
aware that if he were to do this, she would only 
shrink farther away from him, and look up at him 
with fear and mystification, as if she suspected 
him of some hidden meaning,of some strategic move- 
ment against her impregnable reserve. Her whole 
relation to him had narrowed into the single instinct 
of self-defence. If he came unconsciousiy a step 
nearer, if he accidentally touched her hand as he 
passed, he had grown to expect the flaring of 
her uncontrollable repugnance in the heightened 
red in her cheeks. ‘“‘I know that I am repulsive 
to her, that when she looks at me she still sees the 
convict,” he thought, ‘“‘and yet the knowledge of 
this only adds to the pity and tenderness I feel.” 

Lydia had moved through the doorway, but turn- 
ing back in the hall, she spoke with a return of con- 
fidence, as if the fact of the threshold, which she 
had put between them, had restored to her, in a meas- 
ure, the advantage that she had lost. 

“Then I shall leave Alice in your hands. I can 
do nothing more,”’ she said. 

“Give me time and I will do all that you cannot,” 
he answered. 

When she had gone upstairs, he crossed the hall 
to the closed door of the library, and stopped short 
on hearing Alice’s voice break out into song. The 
girl was still in her riding habit, and the gay French 
air on her lips was in accord with the spirited gesture 
with which she turned to him as he appeared. Her 


362 THE ANCIENT LAW 


beauty would have disarmed him even without the 
kiss with which she hastened to avert his reproach. 

‘Alice, can you kiss me when you know you have 
broken your promise?” 

‘“‘IT made no promise,’’ she answered coldly, draw- 
ing away. ‘‘You told me not to go riding with 
Geoffrey, but it was you that said it, not I, and you 
said it only because mamma made you. Oh, I knew 
all the time that it was she!”’ 

Her voice broke with anger and before he could 
restrain her, she ran from the room and up the stair- 
case. An instant afterward he heard a door slam 
violently above his head. Was she really in love 
with Geoffrey Heath? he asked in alarm, or was the 
passion she had shown merely the outburst of an un- 
disciplined child? 





CHAPTER VIII 
THE WEAKNESS IN STRENGTH 


AT BREAKFAST Alice did not appear, and when he 
went upstairs to her room, she returned an answer 
in a sullen voice through her closed door. Ali day 
his heart was oppressed by the thought of her, but 
to his surprise, when he came home to luncheon, 
she met him on the steps with a smiling face. It 
was evident to him at the first glance that she meant 
to ignore both the cause and the occasion of last 
evening’s outburst; and he found himself yielding 
to her determination before he realised all that his 
evasion of the subject must imply. But while she 
hung upon his neck, with her cheek pressed to his, 
it was impossible that he should speak any word that 
would revive her anger against him. Anything 
was better than the violence with which she had 
parted from him the evening before. He could never 
forget his night of anguish, when he had strained 
his ears unceasingly for some stir in her room, hoping 
that a poignant realisation of his love for her would 
bring her sobbing and penitent to his door before 
dawn. 

Now when he saw her again for the first time, she 
had apparently forgotten the parting which had so 
tortured his heart. 


363 


364 THE ANCIENT LAW 


“You ’ve been working too hard, papa, and you ’re 
tired,’ she remarked, rubbing the furrows between 
his eyebrows in a vain endeavour to smooth them 
out. ‘‘Are you obliged to go back to that hateful 
office this afternoon?” 

“T’ve some work that will keep me there until 
dark, I fear,’’ he replied. “It’s a pity because I ’d 
like a ride of all things.” 

“It is a pity, poor dear,’’ protested Alice, but he 
noticed that there was no alteration in her sparkling 
gaiety. Was there, indeed, almost a hint of relief 
in her tone? and was this demonstrative embrace 
but a guarded confession of her gratitude for his 
absence? Something in her manner—a veiled ex- 
citement in her look, a subtle change in her voice 
—caused him to hold her to him in a keener tender- 
ness. It was on his lps to beg for her confidence, to 
remind her of his sympathy in whatever she might 
feel or think—to assure her even of his tolerance 
of Geoffrey Heath. But in the instant when he was 
about to speak, a sudden recollection of the look 
with which she had turned from him last evening, 
checked the impulse before it had had time to 
pass into words. And so because of his terror of 
losing her, he let her go at last in silence from his 
arms. 

His office work that afternoon was heavier than 
usual, for in the midst of his mechanical copying 
and filing, he was abstracted by the memory of that 
strange, unnatural vivacity in Alice’s face. Then 
in the effort to banish the disturbing recollection, 


THE WEAKNESS IN STRENGTH 36s 


he recalled old Adam Crowley, wrapped in his knitted 
shawl, on the doorstep of his cottage. A check of 
Richard’s contributing six hundred dollars toward 
the purchase of a new organ forthe church he attended 
gave Daniel his first opportunity to mention the 
old man to his uncle. 

“I saw Crowley the other day,’’ he began abruptly, 
“‘the man who was my father’s clerk for forty years, 
and whose place,’ he added smiling, “‘I seem to. 
have filled.’’ 

‘““Ah, indeed,’ remarked Richard quietly. ‘‘So 
he is still living?” 

“His right arm has been paralysed, as you know, 
and he is very poor. All his savings were lost in. 
some investments he made by my father’s advice.” 

“So I have heard—it was most unfortunate.”’ 

‘“He had always been led to believe, I understand, 
that he would be provided for by my father’s will.”’ 

Richard laid down his pen and leaned thought- 
fully back in his chair. ‘‘He has told me so,” he 
rejoined, ‘but we have only his word for it, as there 
was no memorandum concerning him among my 
brother’s papers.’’ 

“But surely it was well known that father had 
given him a pension. Aunt Lucy was perfectly 
aware oi it— they talked of it together.”’ 

“During his lifetime he did pay Crowley a small 
monthly allowance in consideration of his past ser- 
vices. But his will was an extremely careful docu- 
ment—his bequests are all made in a perfectly 
legal form.’’ 


366 THE ANCIENT LAW 


‘Was not this will made some years ago, how- 
ever, before the old man became helpless and lost 
his money?” 

Richard nodded: ‘“‘I understood as much from 
Crowley when he came to me with his complaint. 
But, as I reminded him, it would have been a 
perfectly simple matter for Daniel to have made 
such a bequest in a codicil—as he did in your 
case,” he concluded deliberately. 

The younger man met his gaze without flinching. 
““The will, I believe, was written while I was in 
prison,’’ he observed. 

‘Upon the day following your conviction. By 
a former will, which he then destroyed, he had be- 
queathed to you his entire estate. You understand, 
of course,” he pursued; after a pause in which he 
had given his nephew full time to possess himself 
of the information, as well as of the multiplied sug- 
gestions that he had offered, ‘“‘that the income you 
receive now comes from money that is legally your 
own. If it should ever appear advisable for me to 
do so, I am empowered to make over to you the sum 
of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars in securi- 
ties. The principal is left in my hands merely be- 
cause it is to your interest that I should keep an eye 
on the investments.”’ 

‘“Yes, I understand, and I understand, too, that 
but for your insistence my father would probably 
have left me nothing.”’ 

“TI felt very strongly that he had no right to 
disinherit you,’’ returned Richard. ‘‘In my eyes 


ee ey > 
eS Se SLO EE ay ele a 


THE WEAKNESS IN STRENGTH — 367 
he made a grave mistake in refusing to lend you 
support at your trial a 

“As you did, I acknowledge gratefully,’’ inter- 
rupted Daniel, and wondered why the fact had 
aroused in him so little appreciation. As far as the 
observance of the conventional virtues were con- 
cerned, Richard Ordway, he supposed, was, and had 
been all his life, a good man, yet something in his 
austere excellence froze instantly all the gentler 
impulses in his nephew’s heart. It was impossible 
after this to mention again the subject of Crowley, 
so going back to his work, he applied himself to his 
copying until Richard put down his papers and left 
the office. Then he locked his desk wearily and 
followed his uncle out into the street. 

A soft May afternoon was just closing, and the 
street lamps glimmered, here and _ there, like 
white moths out of the mist which was fragrant 
with honeysuckle and roses. An old lamplighter, 
who was descending on his ladder from a tall lamp- 
post at the corner, looked down at Ordway with a 
friendly and merry face. 

‘““The days will soon be so long that you won’t 
be needing us to light you home,’ he remarked, as 
he came down gingerly, his hands grasping the rungs 
of the ladder above his head. When he landed at 
Daniel’s side he began to tell him ina pleasant, gar- 
rulous voice about his work, his rheumatism and the 
strange sights that he had seen in his rounds for so 
many years. ‘‘I’ve seen wonders in my day, you 
may believe it,’’ he went on, chuckling, “I’ve seen 





368 THE ANCIENT LAW 


babies in carriages that grew up to be brides in orange 
blossoms, and then went by me later as corpses in 
hearses. I’ve seen this town when it warn’t mo’n 
a little middlin’ village, and I’ve seen soldiers dyin’ 
in blood in this very street.’’ A train went by 
with a rush along the gleaming track that ran through 
the town. ‘An’ I’ve known the time when a sight 
like that would have skeered folks to death,’’ he added. 

For a minute Ordway looked back, almost wist- 
fully, after the flying train. Then with a friendly 
‘‘sood-bye!’’ he parted from the lamplighter and 
went on his way. 

When he reached home he half expected tc find 
Alice waiting for him in the twilight on the piazza, 
but, to his surprise, Lydia met him as he entered the 
hall and asked him, in a voice which sounded as if 
she were speaking in the presence of servants, to 
come with her into the library. There she closed 
the door upon him and inquired in a guarded tone: 

“Has Alice been with you this afternoon? Have 
you seen or heard anything of her?”’ 

“Not since luncheon. Why, I thought that she 
was at home with one of the girls.’’ 

‘It seems she left the house immediately after 
you. She wore her dark blue travelling dress, and 
one of the servants saw her at the railway station 
at three o’clock.”’ 

For an instant the room swam before his eyes. 
“You believe, then, that she has gone off?’ he 
asked in an unnatural voice, ‘‘that she has gone off 
with Geoffrey Heath?”’ 


CT ST a ee ee hn ee 


THE WEAKNESS IN STRENGTH 369 


In the midst of his own hideous anguish he was 
impressed by the perfect decency of Lydia’s grief 
— by the fact that she wore her anxiety as an added 
grace. 

“T have telephoned for Uncle Richard,”’ she said 
in a subdued tone, ‘‘and he has just sent me word 
that after making inquiries, he learned that Geoffrey 
Heath went to Washington on the afternoon train.”’ 

*“And Alice is with him!”’ 

“If she is not, where is she?’’ Her eyes filled 
with tears, and sinking into a chair she dropped her 
face in her clasped hands. ‘‘Oh, I wish Uncle 
Richard would come,’’ she moaned through her 
fingers. 

Again he felt a smothered resentment at this 
implicit reliance upon Richard Ordway. ‘We must 
make sure first that she is gone,”’ he said, “‘and then 
it will be time enough to consider ways and means 
of bringing her back.” 

Turning abruptly away from her, he went out of 
the library and up the staircase to Alice’s room, 
which was situated directly across the hall from his 
own. At the first glance it seemed to him that 
nothing was missing, but when he looked at her 
dressing-table in the alcove, he found that it had 
been stripped of her silver toilet articles, and that 
her little red leather bag, which he had filled with 
banknotes a few days ago, was not in the top drawer 
where she kept it. Something in the girl’s cham- 
ber, so familiar, so redolent of associations with her 
bright presence, tore at his heart with a fresh sense of 


370 THE ANCIENT LAW 


loss, like a gnawing pain that fastens into a new 
wound. On the bed he saw her pink flannel dressing- 
gown, with the embroidered collar which had so 
delighted her when she had bought it on the floor 
at one side lay her pink quilted slippers, slightly 
soiled trom use; and between the larger pillows was 
the delicate, lace-trimmed baby’s pillow upon which 
she slept. The perfume of her youth, her freshness, 
was still in the room, as if she had gone from it for 
a little while through a still open door. 

At a touch on his arm he looked round startled, 
to find one of the servants—the single remaining slave 
of the past generation—rocking her aged body as she 
stood at his side. 

*‘She ain’ gwine come back no mo’—Yes, Lawd, she 
ain’ gwine come back no mo. Whut’s done hit’s 
done en hit cyarn be undone agin.” 

“Why, Aunt Mehaley, what do you mean?” he 
demanded sternly, oppressed, in spite of himself by 
her wailing voice and her African superstition. 

‘‘T’se seen er tur’ble heap done in my day wid dese 
hyer eyes,’’ resumed the old negress, “‘but I ain’ 
never seen none un um undone agin atter deys 
wunst been done. You kin cut down er tree, but 
you cyarn’ mek hit grow back togedder. You kin 
wring de neck er a rooster, but you cyarn’ mek 
him crow. Yes, my Lawd, hit’s easy to pull down, 
but hit’s- hard to riz up. I’se ole, Marster, en I’se 
mos’ bline wid lookin’, but I ain’ never seen whut ’s 
done undone agin.” 

She tottered out, still wailing in her half-crazed 


THE WEAKNESS IN STRENGTH 371 


voice, and hastily shutting the drawers of the dress- 
ing-table, he went downstairs again to where Lydia 
awaited him in the library. 

‘“There’s no doubt, I fear, that she’s gone with 
Heath,’’ he said, with a constraint into which he 
had schooled himself on the staircase. ‘‘As he ap- 
pears to have stopped at Washington, I shall take 
the next train there, which leaves at nine-twenty- 
five. If they are married v 

He broke off, struck by the pallor that overspread 
her face. 

‘‘But they are married! They must be married!’’ 
she cried in terror. 

For an instant he stared back at her white face 
in a horror as great as hers. Was it the first time 
in his life, he questioned afterwards, that he had 
been brought face to face with the hideous skeletons 
upon which living conventions assume a semblance 
of truth? 

‘‘I hope to heaven that he has not married her!’’ 
he exclaimed in a passion from which she shrank back 
trembling. ‘‘Good God! do you want me to haggle 
with a cad like that to make him marry my child?” 

‘‘And if he doesn’t? what then?’’ moaned Lydia, 
in. a voice that seemed to fade away while she spoke. 

‘If he doesn’t I shall be almost tempted to bless 
his name. Haven’t you proved to me that heis a 
cheat and a brute and a libertine, and yet you dare to 
tell me that I must force him to marry Alice. Oh, 
if he will only have the mercy to leave her free, I 
may still save her!’ he said. : 





372 - THE ANCIENT LAW 


She looked at him with dilated eyes as if rooted 
in fear to the spot upon which she stood. ‘But 
the consequences,’ she urged weakly at last in a 
burst of tears. 

“‘Oh, I'll take the consequences,” he retorted 
harshly, as he went out. 

An hour later, when he was settled in the rushing 
train, it seemed to him that he was able to find com- 
fort in the words with which he had separated from 
his wife. Let Alice do what she would, there was 
always hope for her in the thought that he might 
help her to bear, even if he could not remove from her, 
the consequences of her actions. Could so great a 
force as his love for her fail to avert from her young 
head at least a portion of her inevitable disillusion- 
ment? The recollection of her beauty, of her gener- 
osity, and of the wreck of her womanhood almost be- 
fore it had begun, not only added to his suffering, but 
seemed in some inexplicable way to increase his love. 
The affection he had always felt for her was strength- 
ened now by that touch of pity which lends a deeper 
tenderness to all human relations. 

Upon reaching Washington he found that a shower 
had come up, and the pavements were already wet 
when he left the station. He had brought no umbrella, 
but he hardly heeded this in the eagerness which 
drove him from street to street in his search for his 
child. After making vain inquiries at several of the. 
larger hotels, he had begun to feel almost hopeless, 
when going into the newest and most fashionable of 
them all, he discovered that ‘‘Mr. and Mrs. Geoffrey 


THE WEAKNESS IN STRENGTH — 373 


Heath’? had been assigned an apartment there an 
hour before. In answer to his question the clerk 
informed him that the lady had ordered her dinner 
served upstairs, leaving at the sarne time ex- 
plicit instructions that she was “not at home”’ to 
anyone who should call. But in spite of this rebuff, 
he drew out his card, and sat down in a chair in 
the brilliantly lighted lobby. He had selected a 
seat near a radiator in the hope of drying his damp 
clothes, and presently a little cloud of steam rose 
from his shoulders and drifted out into the shining 
space. As he watched the gorgeous, over-dressed 
women who swept by him, he remembered as one 
remembers a distant dream, the years when his life 
had been spent among such crowds in just such a 
dazzling glare of electric light. It appeared false 
and artificial to him now, but in the meantime, 
he reflected, while he looked on, he had been in 
prison. 

A voice at his elbow interrupted his thoughts, 
and turning in response to an invitation from a 
buttoned sleeve, he entered an elevator and was 
borne rapidly aloft among a tightly wedged group 
of women who were loudly bewailing their absence 
from the theatre. It was with difficulty that he 
released himself at the given signal from his escort, 
and stepped out upon the red velvet carpet which 
led to Alice’s rooms. Jn response to a knock from 
the boy who had accompanied him, the door fiew 
open with a jerk, and Alice appeared before him in 
a bewildering effect of lace and pink satin. 


374 THE ANCIENT LAW 


‘‘O papa, papa, you naughty darling!’’ she ex- 
claimed, and was in his arms before he had time to 
utter the reproach on his lips. 

With her head on his breast, he was conscious at 
first only of an irresponsible joy, like the joy of the 
angels for whom evil no longer exists. To know 
that she was alive, that she was safe, that she was in 
his arms, seemed sufficient delight, not only unto the 
day, but unto his whole future as well. Then the 
thought of what it meant to find her thus in her 
lace and satin came over him, and drawing slightly 
away he looked for the first time into her face. 

‘* Alice, what does it mean?’’ he asked, as he kissed 
her. 

Pushing the loosened hair back from her forehead, 
she met his question with a protesting pout. 

“It means that you ’re a wicked boy to run away 
from home like this and be all by yourself in a bad 
city,’”’ she responded with a playful shake of her 
finger. Then she caught his hand and drew him 
down on the sofa beside her in the midst of the filmy 
train of her tea-gown. ‘‘If you promise never to 
do it again, I shan’t tell mamma on you,” she added, 
with a burst of light-hearted merriment. 

‘Where were you married, Alice? and who did 
it?’’ he asked sternly. 

At his tone a ripple of laughter broke from her lips, 
and reaching for her little red leather bag on the table, 
she opened it and tossed a folded paper upon his knees. 
“TI didn’t ask his name,”’ she responded, “but you 
can find it all written on that, I suppose.” 


THE WEAKNESS IN STRENGTH — 375 


‘‘And you cared nothing for me? — nothing for my 
anxiety, my distress?”’ 

‘I always meant to telegraph bhi of course. 
Geoffrey has gone down now to do it.’ 

‘‘But were you obliged to leave home in this way? 
If you had told me you loved him, I should have 
understood—should have sympathised.” , 

‘‘Oh, but mamma would n’t, and I had to run off. 
Of course, I wanted a big wedding like other girls, 
and a lot of bridesmaids and a long veil, but I knew 
vou ’d never consent to it, so I made up my mind 
just to slip away without saying a word. Geoffrey 
is so rich that I can make up afterwards for the 
things I missed when I was married. This is what 
he gave me to-day. Isn’tit lovely?” 

Baring her throat she showed him a pearl necklace 
hidden beneath her lace collar. ‘‘We’re sailing 
day after to-morrow,” she went on, delightedly, ‘‘and 
we shall go straight to Paris because I am dying to 
see the shops. I would n’t run away with him until 
he promised to take me there.” 

There was no regret in her mind, no misgiving, no 
disquietude. The thought of his pain had not 
marred for an instant the pleasure of her imaginary 
shopping. ‘‘O papa, I am happy, so happy!” she 
sang aloud, springing suddenly to her full height and 
standing before him in her almost barbaric beauty— 
from the splendid hair falling upon her shoulders 
to the little feet that could not keep still for sheer 
joy of living. He saw her red mouth glow and 
tremble as she bent toward him. ‘To think that 


376 THE ANCIENT LAW 


I’m really and truly out of Botetourt at last!’’ she 
cried. 

“Then you’ve no need of me and I may as well 
go home?”’ he said a little wistfully as he rose. 

At this she hung upon his neck for a minute with 
her first show of feeling. ‘“‘I’drather you wouldn ’t 
stay till Geoffrey comes back,’’ she answered, abruptly 
releasing him, ‘‘because it would be a surprise to 
him and he’s always so cross when he’s surprised. 
He has a perfectly awful temper,” she confided in a 
Lurst of frankness, ‘“‘but I’ve learned exactly how 
to manage him, so it doesn’t matter. Then he’s so 
handsome, too. I shouldn’t have looked at him 
twice if he had n’t been handsome. Now, go straight 
home and take good care of yourself and don’t get 
fat and bald before I come back.”’ 

She kissed him several times, laughing in little gasps, 
while she held him close in her arms. Then putting 
him from her, she pushed him gently out into the hall. 
As the door closed on her figure, he felt that it 
shut upon all that was living or warm in his heart. 


BOOK FOURTH 


LIBERATION 


eit. 


Hs NGA Ds 





- 
ee, 
eae 


<a 





™ 


CHAPTER I 
Tue INWARD LIGHT 


ON THE day that he returned to Botetourt, it 
seemed to Ordway that the last vestige of his youth 
dropped from him; and one afterneon six months 
later, as he passed some schoolboys who were play- 
ing ball in the street, he heard one of them remark 
in an audible whisper: ‘‘Just wait till that old 
fellow over there gets out of the way.’ Since com- 
ing home again his interests, as well as his power 
of usefulness, had been taken from him; and the © 
time that he had spent in prison had aged him 
less than the three peaceful years which he had 
passed in Botetourt. All that suffering and experience 
could not destroy had withered and died in the 
monotonous daily round which carried him from his - 
home to Richard’s office and back again from Rich- 
ard’s office to his home. 

Outwardly he had grown only more quiet and gen- 
tle, as people are apt to do who approach the middle 
years in a position of loneliness and dependence. 
To Richard and to Lydia, who had never entirely 
ceased to watch him, it appeared that he had at last 
“settled down,” that he might be, perhaps, trusted 
to walk alone; and it was with a sensation of relief 
that his wife observed the intense youthful beam 


379 


380 THE ANCIENT LAW 


fade from his blue eves. When his glance grew 
dull and lifeless, and his features fell gradually into 
the lines of placid repose which mark the body’s 
contentment rather than the spirit’s triumph, it 
seemed to her that she might at last lay aside the 
sieepless anxiety which had been her marriage 
portion. 

“He has become quite like other people now,” 
she said one day to Richard, ‘‘do you know that he 
has grown to take everything exactly as a matter 
of course, and I really pclae he enjoys what he 
eats.” : 

“T’m glad of that,” returned Richard, ‘‘for I’ve 
noticed that he is looking very far from well. I 
advised him several weeks ago to take care of that 
cough, but he seems to have some difficulty in get- 
ting rid of it.” 

“He hasn’t been well since Alice’s marriage,’’ ob- 
served Lydia, a little troubled. ‘“‘You know he 
travelled home from Washington in wet clothes and 
had a spell of influenza afterward. He’s hada cold 
ever since, for I hear him coughing a good deal after 
he first goes to bed.”’ 

“You ’d better make him attend to it, I think, 
though with his Pee chest there ’s little danger of 
anything serious.’ 

“Do you suppose Alice’ S$ Marriage could have 
sobered him? He’s grown very quiet and grave, and 
I dare say it’s a sign that his wildness has gone out 
of him, poor fellow. You remember how his 
laugh used to frighten me? Well, he never laughs 


THE INWARD LIGHT 38r 


like that now, though he sometimes stares hard 
at me as if he were looking directly through me, and 
did n’t even know that he was doing it.”’ 

As she spoke she glanced out of the window and 
her eyes fell on Daniel, who came slowly up the 
gravelled walk, his head bent over an armful of old 
books he carried. 

“‘He visits a great deal among the poor,’’ remarked 
Richard, ‘‘and I think that ’s good for him, provided, 
of course, that he does it with discretion.”’ 

‘““I suppose it is,’’ said Lydia, though she added 
immediately, “but aren’t the poor often very 
immoral?’’ 

A reply was on Richard’s lips, but before he could 
utter it, the door opened and Daniel entered with 
the slow, almost timid, step into which he had 
schooled himself since his return to Botetourt. As 
he saw Richard a smile—his old boyish smile of 
peculiar sweetness—came to his lips, but without 
speaking, he crossed to the table and laid down the 
books he carried. 

“Tf those are old books, won’t you remember 
to take them up to your room, Daniel?”’ said Lydia, 
in her tone of aggrieved sweetness. ‘‘They make 
such a litter in the library.” 

He started slightly, a nervous affection which 
had increased in the last months, and looked at her 
with an apologetic glance. As he stood there she 
had again that singular sensation of which she had 
spoken to Richard, as if he were gazing through her 
and not at her. 


382 THE ANCIENT LAW 


“I beg your pardon,” he answered, “‘I remember 
now that I left some here yesterday.”’ 

“Oh, it does n’t matter, of course,’’ she responded 
pleasantly, ‘it ’s only that I like to keep the house 
tidy, you know.” 

‘“They do make rather a mess,” he admitted, and 
gathering them up again, he carried them out of the 
room and up the staircase. 

They watched his bent gray head disappear be- 
tween the damask curtains in the doorway, and 
then listened almost unconsciously for the sound of 
his slow gentle tread on the floor above. 

‘“There was always too much of the dreamer about 
him, even as a child,’’ commented Richard, when 
the door was heard to close over their heads, ‘‘but 
he seems contented enough now with his old books, 
does n’t he?”’ 

‘‘Contented? Yes, I believe he is even happy. 
I never say much to him because, you see, there is 
so very little for us to talk about. It is a dreadful 
thing to confess,’ she concluded resolutely, “but 
the truth is I’ve been always a little afraid of him 
since—since fy 

‘“* Afraid?’’ he looked at her in astonishment. 

“Well, not exactly afraid—but nervous with a 
kind of panic shudder at times—a dread of his com- 
ing close to me, of his touching me, of his wanting 
things of me.’’ A shiver ran through her and she 
bit her lip as if to hide the expression of horror upon 
her face. ‘‘There’s nobody else on earth that I 
would say it to, but when he first came back I used 





| 








THE INWARD LIGHT 383 


to have nightmares about it. I could never get 
it out of my mind a minute and if they left me alone 
with him, I wanted almost to scream with nervous- 
ness. It’s silly I know, and I can’t explain it even 
to you, but there were times when I shrieked aloud 
in my sleep because I dreamed that he had come into 
my room and touched me. I felt that I was wrong 
and foolish, but I could n’t help it, and I tried— 
tried —oh, so hard to bear things and to be brave and 
patient.” 

The tears fell from her eyes on her clasped hands, 
but her attitude of sorrow only made more appeal- 
ing the Madonna-like loveliness of her features. 

“You ’ve been a saint, Lydia,’’ he answered, 
patting her drooping shoulder as he rose to his 
feet. ‘Poor girl, poor girl! and no daughter of my 
own could be dearer to me,’”’ he added in his austere 
sincerity of manner. 

“T have tried to do right,” replied Lydia, lifting 
her pure eyes to his in an overflow of religious 
emotion. 

Meanwhile the harmless object of their anxiety 
sat alone in his room under a green lamp, with one 
of the musty books he had bought open upon. his 
knees. He was not reading, for his gaze was fixed 
on the opposite wall, and there was in his eyes some- 
thing of the abstracted vision which Lydia dreaded. 
It was as if his intellect, forced from the outward 
experience back into the inner world of thought, 
had ended by projecting an image of itself into the 
space at which he looked. While he sat there the 


384 THE ANCIENT LAW 


patient, apologetic smile with which he had answered 
to his wife was still on his lips. 

‘IT suppose it’s because I’m getting old that 
people and things no longer make me suffer,’’ he 
said to himself, ‘‘it’s because I’m getting old that 
I can look at Lydia unmoved, that I can feel ten- 
derness for her even while I see the repulsion creep 
into her eyes. It isn’t her fault, after all, that she 
loathes me, nor is it mine. Yes, I’m certainly an 
old fellow, the boy was right. At any rate, it’s 
pleasanter, on the whole, than being young.” 

Closing the book, he laid it on the table, and 
leaned forward with his chin on his hands. ‘But 
if I’d only known when I was young!” he added, 
“if I’d only known!” His past life rose before him 
as a picture that he had seen, rather than as a road 
along which he had travelled; and he found himself 
regarding it almost as impersonally as he might 
have regarded the drawing upon the canvas. The 
peril of the inner life had already begun to beset 
bim—that mysterious power of reliving one’s ex- 
perience with an intensity which makes the objective 
world appear dull and colourless by contrast. It 


was with en effort at times that he was able to detach _ 


his mind from the contemplative habit into which he 
had fallen. Between him and his surroundings 
there existed but a single bond, and this was 
_the sympathy which went out of him when he 
was permitted to reach the poor and the afflicted. 
To them he could still speak, with them he could 


still be mirthful; but from his wife, his uncle, and ‘ 





Oa it a ine = 
Le ee a ee ee a cee en se eee 











THE INWARD LIGHT 385 


the members of his own class, he was divided by 
that impenetrable wall of social tradition. In his 
home he had ceased to laugh, as Lydia had said; 
but he could still laugh in the humbler houses of the 
poor. They had received him as one of themselves, 
and for this reason alone he could remember how to 
be merry when he was with them. To the others, 
to his own people, he felt himself to be always an 
outsider, a reclaimed castaway, a philanthropic case 
instead of an individual; and he knew that if there 
was one proof the more to Lydia that he was in the 
end a redeemed character, it was the single fact that 
he no longer laughed in her presence. It was, he 
could almost hear her say, unbecoming, if not posi- 
tively improper, that a person who had spent five 
years in prison should be able to laugh immoder- 
ately afterward; and the gravity of his lips was in 
her eyes, he understood, the most satisfactory testi- 
mony to the regeneration of his heart. 

And yet Lydia, according to her vision, was a kind, 
as well as a conscientious woman. The pity of it 
was that if he were to die now, three years after his 
homecoming, she would probably reconstruct an im- 
aginary figure of him in her memory, and wear crape 
for it with appropriate grace and dignity. The 
works of the imagination are manifold, he thought 
with a grim humour, even in a dull woman. 

But as there was not likely to occur anything so 
dramatic, in the immediate present, as his death, 
he wondered vaguely what particular form of aver- 
sion his wife’s attitude would next express. Or 


386 THE ANCIENT LAW 


could it be that since he had effaced himself so 
utterly, he hardly dared to listen to the sound of 
his footsteps in the house, she had grown to regard 
him with a kind of quiet tolerance, as an object 
which was unnecessary, perhaps, yet entirely in- 
offensive? He remembered now that during those 
terrible first years in prison he had pursued the 
thought of her with a kind of hopeless violence, 
yet to-day he could look back upon her desertion 
of him in his need with a compassion which forgave 
the weakness that it could not comprehend. That, 
too, he supposed was a part of the increasing list- 
lessness of middle age. In a little while he would 
look forward, it might be, to the coming years with- 
out dread—to the long dinners when he sat opposite 
to her with the festive bowl of flowers between them, 
to the quiet evenings when she lingered for a few 
minutes under the lamp before going to her room 
—those evenings which are the supreme hours of 
love or of despair. Oh, well, he would grow indiffer- 
ent to the horror of these things, as he had already 
grown indifferent to the soft curves of her body. 
Yes, it was a thrice blessed thing, this old age to 
which he was coming! 

Then another memory flooded his heart with the 
glow of youth, and he saw Emily, as she had appeared 
to him that night in the barn more than six years 
ago, when she had stood with the lantern held high 
above her head and the red cape slipping back from 
her upraised arm. A sharp pain shot through him, 
and he dropped his eyes as if he had met a blow. 


THE INWARD LIGHT 387 


That was youth at which he had looked for one 
longing instant—that was youth and happiness 
and inextinguishable desire. 

For a moment he sat with bent head; then with 
an effort he put the memory from him, and opened 
his book at the page where he had left off. As he 
did so there was a tap at his door, and when he 
had spoken, Lydia came in timidly with a letter in her 
hand. 

“This was put into Uncle Richard’s box by mis- 
take,’’ she said, ‘‘and he has just sent it over.’ 

He took it from her and seeing that it was ad- 
dressed in Baxter’s handwriting, laid it, still un- 
opened, upon the table. ‘‘Won’t vou sit down?” 
he asked, pushing forward the chair from which he 
had risen. , 

A brief hesitation showed in her face; then as he 
turned away from her to pick up some scattered 
papers from the floor, she sat down with a tentative, 
nervous manner. 

““Are you quite sure that you ’re well, Daniel?’’ 
she inquired. ‘‘Uncle Richard noticed to-day that 
you coughed a good deal in the office. I wonder 
if you get exactly the proper kind of food?’’ 

He nodded, smiling. ‘‘Oh, I’m all right,” he 
responded, “I’m as hard as nails, you know, and 
always have been.” 

‘**Even hard people break down sometimes. I wish 
you would take a tonic or see a doctor.” 

Her solicitude surprised him, until he remem- 
bered that she had never failed in sympathy for 


388 THE ANCIENT LAW 


purely physical ailments. If he had needed bodily 
healing instead of mental, she would probably have 
applied it with a conscientious devotedness. 

‘‘T am much obliged to you, but I’m really not 
sick,”’ he insisted, ‘‘it is very good of you, however.” 

“Tt is ncthing more than my duty,” she rejoined, 
sweetly. 

‘‘Well, that may be, but there’s nothing to pre- 
vent my being obliged to you for doing your duty.” 

Puzzled as always by his whimsical tone, she sat 
looking at him with her gentle, uncomprehending 
glance. ‘I wish, all the same,’’ she murmured, 
“that you would let me send you a mustard plaster 
to put on your chest.”’ 

He shook his head without replying in words to 
her suggestion. 

‘‘Do you know it is three months since we had a 
letter from Alice,’’ he said, ‘‘and six since she went 
away.” 

‘““Oh, it’s that then? You have been worrying 
about Alice?”’ 

“How can I help it? We hardly know even 
that she is living.” 

“T’ve thought of her day and night since her 
marriage, though it’s just as likely, isn ’t it, that 
she ’s taken up with the new countries and her new 
clothes?”’ 

‘‘Oh, of course, it may be that, but it is the awful 
uncertainty that kills.” 

With a sigh she looked down at her slippered feet. 
‘‘T was thinking to-day what a comfort Dick is to me 


THE INWARD LIGHT 389 


—to us all,’’ she said, ‘‘one is so sure of him and 
he is doing so splendidly at college.” 

“Yes,” he agreed, ‘‘Dick is a comfort. I wish 
poor Alice was more like him.” 

‘‘She was always wild, you remember, never like 
other children, and it was impossible to make her 
understand that some things were right and some 
wrong. Yet I never thought that she would care 
for such a loud, vulgar creature as Geoffrey Heath,” 

‘Did she care for him?’’ asked Daniel, almost in 
a whisper, ‘‘or was it only that she wanted to see 
Paris?’’ 

‘“Well, she may have improved him a little—at 
least let us hope so,’’ she remarked as if she had not 
heard his question. ‘‘He has money, at any rate, 
and that is what she has always wanted, though 
I fear even Geoffrey’s income will be strained by her 
ceaseless extravagance.”’ 

As she finished he thought of her own youth, 
which she had evidently forgotten, and it seemed 
to him that the faults she blamed most in Alice 
were those which she had overcome patiently in her 
own nature. 

“TI could stand anything better than this long 
suspense,” he said gently. 

“It does wear one out,’’ she rejoined, ‘‘I am 
very, very sorry for you.” 

Some unaccustomed tone in her voice—a more 
human quality, a deeper cadence, made him wonder 
in an impulse of self-reproach if, after all, the breach 
between them was in part of his own making? 


390 THE ANCIENT LAW 


Was it still possible to save from the ruin, if not love, 
at least human companionship? 

‘“‘Lydia,” he said, “it is n’t Alice, it is mostly lone- 
liness, I think.” 

Rising from her chair she stood before him with 
her vague, sweet smile playing about her lips. 

“It is natural that you should feel depressed 
with that cough,” she remarked, ‘“‘I really wish you 
would let me send you a mustard plaster.”’ 

As the cough broke out again, he strangled it 
hilariously in a laugh. ‘‘Oh, well, if it’s any com- 
fort to you, I don’t mind,” he responded. 

When she had gone he picked up Baxter’s letter 
from the table and opened it with trembling fingers. 
What he had expected to find, he hardly knew, but 
as he read the words, written so laboriously in Bax- 
ter’s big scrawling writing, he felt that his energy 
_ returned to him with the denand for action—for 
personal responsibility. 

*‘I don’t know whether or not you heard of Mrs. Brooke’s 
death three months ago,’”’ the letter ran, ‘‘ but this is to say 
that Mr. Beverly dropped down with a paralytic stroke last 
week; and now since he’s dead and buried, the place is to be 
sold for debt and the children sent off to school to a friend 
of Miss Emily’s where they can go cheap. Miss Emily hasa 
good place now in the Tappahannock Bank, but she’s going 
North before Christmas to some big boarding school where 
they teach riding. There are a lot of things to be settled about 
the sale, and I thought that, being convenient, you might 
take the trouble to run down for a day and help us with your 
advice, which ts of the best always. 


‘* Hoping that you are in good health, I am at present, 
BAXTER.” 


THE INWARD LIGHT 391 


As he folded the letter a flush overspread his 
face. ‘‘I’ll go,’ he said, with a new energy in his 
voice, ‘‘I "Il go to-morrow.”’ 

Then turning in response to a knock, he opened 
the door and received the mustard plaster which Lydia 
had made. 


CHAPTER II 
At TAPPAHANNOCK AGAIN 


He HAD sent a telegram to Banks, and as the 
train pulled into the station, he saw the familiar 
sandy head and freckled face awaiting him upon the 
platform. 

‘“‘By George, this is a bully sink: Smith,’ 
the first shout that reached his ears. 

‘‘You ’re not a bit more pleased than I am,”’ he 
returned laughing with pleasure, as he glanced 
from the station, crowded with noisy Negroes, up 
the dusty street into which they were about to 
turn. ‘‘It’s like coming home again, and upon my 
word, I wish I were never to leave here. But 
how are you, Banks? So you are married to Milly 
and going to live contented forever afterward.” 

“Yes, I’m married,’ replied Banks, without 
enthusiasm, ‘‘and there ’s a baby about which Milly 
is clean crazy. Milly has got so fat,’? he added, 
‘that you’d never believe I could have spanned 
her waist with my hands three years ago.” 

“Indeed? And is she as captivating as ever?” 

‘Well, I reckon she must be,” said Banks, ‘‘ but 
it doesn ’t seem so mysterious, somehow, as it used 
to.”” His silly, affectionate smile broke out as he 
looked at his companion. ‘‘To tell the truth,” 


392 


AT TAPPAHANNOCK AGAIN 393 


he confessed, ‘‘I ’ve been missing you mighty hard, 
Smith, marriage or no marriage. It ain’t any- 
thing against Milly, God knows, that she can’t take 
your place, and it ain’t anything against the baby. 
What I want is somebody I can sit down and 
look up to, and I don’t seem to be exactly able to 
look up to Milly or to the baby.” 

“The trouble with you, my dear Banks, is that 
you are an incorrigible idealist and always will be. 
You were born to be a poet and I don’t see to save 
my life how you escaped.” 

“I didn’t. I used to write a poem every Sunday 
of my life when I first went into tobacco. But 
after that Milly came and I got used to spending 
all my Sundays with her.” 

“Well, now that you have her in the week, you 
might begin all over again.” 

They were walking rapidly up the long hill, and 
as Ordway passed, he nodded right and left to the 
familiar faces that looked out from the shop doors. 
They were all friendly, they were all smiling, they 
were all ready to welcome him back among them. 

“The queer part is,’’ observed Banks, with that 
stubborn vein of philosophy which accorded so oddly 
with his frivolous features, ‘“‘that the thing you get 
does n’t ever seem to be the same as the thing you 
wanted. This Milly is kind to me and the other 
was n't, but, somehow, that hasn’t made me stop 
regretting the other one that I didn’t marry—the 
Milly that banged and snapped at me about my 
clothes and things all day long. I don’t know what 


304 THE ANCIENT LAW 


it means, Smith, I’ve studied about it, but I can't 
understand.” 

“The meaning of it is, Banks, that you wanted 
not the woman, but the dream.”’ 

“Well, I did n’t get it,” rejoined Banks, gloomily.. 

“Yet Milly’s a good wife and you’re happy, 
are n’t you?” 

‘“‘T should be,” replied Banks, ‘‘if I could forget 
how darn fascinating that other Milly was. Oh, 
yes, she’s a good wife and a doting mother, and 
I’m happy enough, but it’s a soft, squashy kind of 
happiness, not like the way I used to feel when I ’d 
walk home with you after the preaching in the old 
field.”’ 

While he spoke they had reached Baxter’s ware- 
house, and as Ordway was recognized, there was a 
quiver of excitement in the little crowd about the 
doorway. A moment later it had surrounded him 
with a shout of welcome. A dozen friendly hands 
were outstretched, a dozen breathless lips were 
calling his name. As the noise passed through the 
neighbouring windows, the throng was increased 
by a number of small storekeepers and a few strag- 
gling operatives from the cotton mills, until at last 
he stopped, half laughing, half crying, in their midst. 
Ten minutes afterward, when Baxter wedged his 
big person through the archway, he saw Ordway 
standing bareheaded in the street, his face suffused 
with a glow which seemed to give back to him a 
fleeting beam of the youth that he had lost. 

‘Well, I reckon it’s my turn now. You can 


AT TAPPAHANNOCK AGAIN 395 


just step inside the office, Smith,” remarked Baxter, 
while he grasped Ordway’s arm and pulled him back 
into the warehouse. As they entered the little room, 
Daniel saw again the battered chair, the pile of 
Smith’s Almanacs, and the paper weight, represent- 
ing a gambolling kitten, upon the desk. 

“I’m glad to see you—we ’re all glad to see you,” 
said Baxter, shaking his hand for the third time with 
a grasp which made Ordway feel that he was in the 
clutch of a down cushion. “It isn’t the way of 
Tappahannock to forget a friend, and she ain’t 
forgotten you.” 

“It’s like her,’’ returned Ordway, and he added 
with a sigh, “I only wish I were coming back for 
good, Baxter.”’ 

‘There now!’’ exclaimed Baxter, chuckling, ‘‘ you 
don’t, do you? Well, all I can say, my boy, is that 
you ’ve got a powerful soft spot that you left here, 
and your old job in the warehouse is still waiting for 
you when you care to take it. I tell you what, 
Smith, you ’ve surely spoiled me for any other book- 
keeper, and I ain’t so certain, when it comes to 
that, that you have n’t spoiled me for myself.” 

He was larger, softer, more slovenly than ever, 
but he was so undeniably the perfect and inimitable 
Baxter, that Ordway felt his heart go out to him 
in a rush of sentiment. ‘‘Oh, Baxter, how is it 
possible that I ’ve lived without you?’’ he asked. 

**T don’t know, Smith, but it’s a plain fact that 
after my wife—and that’s nature—there ain’t any- 
body goin’ that I set so much store by. Why, when 


396 THE ANCIENT LAW 


I was in Botetourt last spring, I went so far as to 
put my right foot on your bottom step, but, some- 
how, the left never picked up the courage to follow it.” 

‘“‘Do you dare to tell me that you ’ve been to Bote- 
tourt?’’ demanded Ordway with indignation. 

“Well, I could have stood the house you live it, 
though it kind of took my breath away,” replied 
Baxter, with an embarrassed and guilty air, “‘but 
when it came to facing that fellow at the door, then 
my courage gave out and I bolted. I studied him 
a long while, thinking I might get my eyes used to 
the sight of him, but it did no good. I declar’, 
Smith, I could no more have put a word to him than 
I could to the undertaker at my own funeral. Bless 
my soul, suh, poor Mr. Beverly, when he was alive, 
did n’t hold a tallow candle to that man.” 

“You might have laid in wait for me in the street, 
then, that would have been only fair.” 

“But how did I know, Smith, that you wan't 
livin’ up to the man at your door?” 

“It would n’t have taken you long to find out 
that I wasn’t. So poor Mr. Beverly is dead and 
buried, then, is he?” 

Baxter’s face adopted instantly a funereal cea. 
and his voice, when he spoke, held a quaver of 
regret. 

“There wasn’t a finer gentleman on earth than 
Mr. Beverly,’’ he said, ‘cand he would have given 
me his last blessed cent if he ’d ever had one to give. 
I ’ve lost a friend, Smith, there ’s no doubt of that, 
I’ve lost a friend. And poor Mrs. Brooke, too,” 


AT TAPPAHANNOCK AGAIN 397 


he added sadly. ‘‘Many and many is the time 
I’ve heard Mr. Beverly grieven’ over the way she 
worked. ‘If things had only come out as I planned 
them, Baxter,’ he’d say to me, ‘my wife should 
never have raised her finger except to lift food to 
her lips.’”’ 

““And yet I’ve seen him send her downstairs a 
dozen times a day to make him a lemonade,”’ ob- 
served Ordway cynically. 

“That wasn’t his fault, suh, he was born like 
that—it was just his way. He was always obliged 
to have what he wanted.” 

“Well, I can forgive him for killing his wife, but 
I can’t pardon him for the way he treated his sister. 
That girl used to work like a farm hand when I 
was out there.” 

“She was mighty fond of him all the same, was 
Miss Emily.” 

‘““Everybody was, that’s what I’m quarreling 
about. He did n’t deserve it.” 

“But he meant well in his heart, Smith, and it’s 
by that that I’m judgin’ him. It wasn’t his fault, 
was it, if things never went just the way he had 
planned them out? I don’t deny, of course, that 
he was sort of flighty at times, as when he made a 
will the week before he died and left five hundred 
dollars to the Tappahannock Orphan Asylum.” 

“To the Orphan Asylum? Why, his own chil- 
dren are orphans, and he did n’t have five hundred 
dollars to his name!”’ 

“Of course, he didn’t, that’s just the point,” 


398 THE ANCIENT LAW 


said Baxter with a placid tolerance which seemed 
largely the result of physical bulk, ‘‘and so they 
have had to sell most of the furniture to pay the be- 
quest. You see, just the night before his stroke, he 
got himself considerably worked up over those 
orphans. So he just could n’t help hopin’ he would 
have five hundred dollars to leave ’em when he came 
to die, an’ in case he did have it he thought he might 
as well be prepared. Then he sat right down and 
wrote the bequest out, and the next day there came 
his stroke and carried him off.” 

‘“‘Oh, you’re a first-rate advocate, Baxter, but 
that does n’t alter my opinion of Mr. Beverly. What 
about his own orphans now? How are they going 
to be provided for?” 

‘It seems Miss Emily is to board ’em out at some 
school she knows of, and I’ve settled it with her 
that she’s to borrow enough from me to tide over 
any extra expenses until spring.” 

“Then we are to wind up the affairs of Cedar 
Hill, are we? I suppose it’s best for everybody, 
but it makes me sad enough to think of it.” 

‘*And me, too, Smith,” said Baxter, sentimen- 
tally. ‘‘I can see Mr. Beverly to the life now playin’ 
with his dominoes on the front porch. But there ’s 
mighty little to wind up, whenit comestothat. It’s 
mortgaged pretty near to the last shingle, and when 
the bequest to the orphans is paid out of what’s 
over, there ’Il be precious few dollars that Miss Emily 
can call her own. The reason I sent for you, Smith,” 
he added in a solemn voice, ‘“‘was that I thought you 


AT TAPPAHANNOCK AGAIN 399 


might be some comfort to that poor girl out there 
in her affliction. If you feel inclined, I hoped you’d 
walk out to Cedar Hili and read her a chapter or so 
in the Bible. I remembered how consolin’ you used 
to be to people in trouble.” 

With a prodigious effort Ordway swallowed his 
irreverent mirth, while Baxter’s pious tones sounded 
in hisears. ‘‘Of course I shall go out to Cedar Hill,” 
he returned, ‘‘but I was wondering, Baxter,” he 
broke off for a minute and then went on again with an 
embarrassed manner, ‘‘I was wondering if there was 
any way I could help those children without being 
found out? It would make me particularly happy 
to feel that I might share in giving them an edu- 
cation. Do you think you could smuggle the money 
for their school bills into their Christmas stockings?” 

Baxter thought over 1t a moment. “I mightmanage 
it,” he replied, ‘seein’ that the bills are mostly to 
come through my hands, and I’m to settle all that 
I can out of what ’s left of the estate.”’ 

As he paused Daniel looked hastily away from 
him, fearful lest Baxter might be perplexed by the 
joy that shone in his face. To be connected, even 
so remotely, with Emily in the care of Beverly’s 
children, was a happiness for which, a moment ago, 
he had not dared to hope. 

‘‘Let me deposit the amount with you twice a 
year,” he said, “that will be both the easiest and 
the safest way.” 

““Maybe you’re right. And now it’s settled, 
ain’t it, that you ’re to come to my house to stay?” 


400 THE ANCIENT LAW 


“T must go back on the night train, I’m sorry 
to say, but if youll let me Ill drop in to supper. 
I remember your wife’s biscuits of old,’’ he added, 
smiling. 3 

“You don’t mean it! Well, it li tickle her to 
death, I reckon. It ain’t likely, by the way, that 
you ‘ll find much to eat out at Cedar Hill, so you’d 
better remember to have a snack before you start.’ 

“‘Oh, I can fast until supper,” returned Daniel, 
rising. 

‘Well, don’t forget to give my respects to Miss 
Emily, and tell her I say not to worry, but to let 
the Lord take a turn. You'll find things pretty 
topsy-turvy out there, Smith,’’ he added, ‘“‘but if 
you don’t happen to have your Bible handy, Ill 
lend you one and welcome. There’s the big one 
with gilt clasps the boys gave me last Christmas 
right on top of my desk.” 

‘‘Oh, they ’re sure to have one around,” replied 
Ordway gravely, as he shook hands again before 
leaving the office. 

From the top of the hill by the brick church, he 
caught a glimpse of the locust trees in Mrs. Twine’s 
little yard, and turning in response to a remembered 
force of habit, he followed the board sidewalk to 
the whitewashed gate, which hung slightly open. 
In the street a small boy was busily flinging pebbles 
at the driver of a coal wagon, and calling the child to 
him, Ordway inquired if Mrs. Twine still lived in that 
house. 

““Thar ain’t no Mrs. Twine,” replied the boy, 


AT TAPPAHANNOCK AGAIN 401 


‘“‘she’s Mrs. Buzzy. She married my pa, that’s 
why I’m here,’ he explained with a wink, as the 
door behind him flew open, and the lady in question 
rushed out to welcome her former lodger. ‘‘I hear her 
now—she ’sa-comin’. My, an’ she’sa tartar, she is!” 

“It’s the best sight I’ve laid eyes on sense 
I saw po’, dear Bill on his deathbed,’ exclaimed 
the tartar, with delight. ‘‘Come right in, suh, come 
right in an’ set down an’ let me git a look at you. 
Thar ain’t much cheer in the house now sence I’ve 
lost Bill an’ his sprightly ways, but the welcome ’s 
warm if the house ain’t.” 

She brought him ceremoniously into her closed 
parlour, and then at his request led him out of the 
stagnant air back into her comfortable, though 
untidy, kitchen. ‘‘I jest had my hand in the dough, 
suh, when I heard yo’ voice,’”’ she observed apolo- 
getically, as she wiped off the bottom of a chair 
with her blue gingham apron. ‘“‘I knew you ’d be 
set back to find out I did n’t stay long a widder.”’ 

‘‘T had n’t even heard of Bill’s death,” he returned, 
‘so it was something of a surprise to discover that 
you were no longer Mrs. Twine. Was it very sudden?” 

‘““Yes, suh, ’t was tremens—delicious tremens— 
an’ they took him off so quick we did n’t even have 
the crape in the house to tie on the front do’ knob. 
You could a heard him holler all the way down 
to the cotton mills. He al’ays had powerful fine 
lungs, had Bill, an’ if he ’d a-waited for his lungs to 
take him, he’d be settin’ thar right now, as peart 
as life.’’ 


402 THE ANCIENT LAW 


Her eyes filled with tears, but wiping them hastily 
away with her apron, she took up a pan of potatoes 
and began paring them with a handleless knife. 

‘““After your former marriages,” he remarked 
doubtful as to whether he should offer sympathy 
or congratulations, ‘I should have thought you 
would have rested free for a time at least.’ 

“Tt warn’t my way, Mr. Smith,” she responded, 
with a mournful shake of her head. ‘‘To be sure I 
had a few peaceful months arter Bill was gone, but 
the queer thing is how powerful soon peace can 
begin to pall on yo’ taste. Why, I had n’t been in 
mo’nin’ for Bill goin’ on to four months, when Silas 
Trimmer came along an’ axed me, an’ I said ‘yes’ 
as quick as that, jest out a the habit of it. I took 
off my mo’nin an’ kep’ comp’ny with him for quite 
a while, but we had a quarrel over Bill’s tombstone, 
suh, for, bein’ a close-fisted man, he warn ’t willin’ 
that I should put up as big a monument as I’d a 
mind to. Well, I broke off with him on that account, 
for when it comes to choosin’ between respect to the 
dead an’ marriage to the livin’ Silas Trimmer, I told 
nim ‘I reckon it won’t take long for you to find out 
which way my morals air set.’ He got mad as a 
hornet and went off, and I put on, mo’nin agin an’ 
wo’ it steddy twil the year was up.”’ 

‘“And at the end of that time, I presume, you 
were wearied of widowhood and married Buzzy?” 

“It’s a queer thing, suh,”’ she observed, as she 
picked up a fresh potato and inspected it as atten- 
tively as if it had been a new proposal,’ it ’sa queer 


AT TAPPAHANNOCK AGAIN 403 


thing we ain’t never so miserable in this world as 
when we ain’t got the frazzle of an excuse to be so. 
Now, arter Bill went from me, thar was sech a quiet 
about that it began to git on my nerves, an’ at last 
it got so that I could n’t sleep at nights because I was 
no longer obleeged to keep one ear open to hear if 
he was comin’ upstairs drunk or sober. Bless yo’ 
heart, thar ’s not a woman on earth that don’t need 
some sort of distraction, an Bill was a long sight 
better at distractin’ you than any circus I ’ve ever 
seen. Why, I even stopped goin’ to ’em as long 
as he was livin’, for it was a question every minute 
as to whether he was goin’ to chuck you under the 
chin or lam you on the head, an’ thar was a mortal 
lot a sprightliness about it. I reckon I must have 
got sort a sp’iled by the excitement, for when ’t was 
took away, I jest didn’t seem to be able to settle 
down. But thar are mighty few men with the littie 
ways that Bill had,” she refiected sadly. 

“Yet your present husband is kind to you, is he 
not?” 

“Oh, he’s kind enough, suh,” she replied, with 
unutterable contempt, ‘‘but thar ain’t nothin’ in 
marriage that palls so soon as kindness. It’s unex- 
pectedness that keeps you from goin’ plum crazy 
with the sameness of it, an’ thar ain’t a bit of 
unexpectedness about Jake. He does everything 
so regular that thar ’re times when I ’d like to bust 
him open jest to see how he is wound up inside, 
Naw, suh, it ain’t the blows that wears a woman 
out, it ’s the mortal sameness.”’ 


404 THE ANCIENT LAW 


Clearly there was no comfort to be afforded her, 
and after a few words of practical advice on the 
subject of the children’s education, he shook hands 
with her and started again in the direction of Cedar 
Hill. 

The road with its November colours brought 
back to him the many hours when he had tramped 
over it in cheerfulness or in despair. The dull 
brown stretches of broomsedge, rolling like a high 
sea, the humble cabins. nestling so close to the 
ground, the pale clay road winding under the 
half-bared trees, from which the bright leaves 
were fluttering downward — these things made the 
breach of the years close as suddenly as if the di- 
vided scenery upon a stage had rolled together. 
While he walked alone here it was impossible to be- 
lieve in the reality of his life in Botetourt. 

As he approached Cedar Hill, the long melancholy 
avenue appeared to him as an appropriate shelter for 
Beverly’s gentle ghost. He was surprised to dis- 
cover with what tenderness he was able to surround 
the memory of that poetic figure since he stood again 
in the atmosphere which had helped to cultivate 
his indefinable charm. In Tappahannock Beverly’s life 
might still be read inthe dry lines of prose, but be- 
neath the historic influences of Cedar Hill it became, 
even in Ordway’s eyes, a poem of sentiment. 

Beyond the garden, he could see presently, through 
a gap in the trees, the silvery blur of life everlasting 
in the fallow land, which was steeped in afternoon 
sunshine. Somewhere from a nearer meadow there 


AT TAPPAHANNOCK AGAIN 405 


floated a faint call of “‘Coopee ! Coopee! Coopee !”’ 
to the turkeys lost in the sassafras. Then as he 
reached the house Aunt Mehitable’s face looked down 
at him from a window in the second story ; and in 
response to her signs of welcome, he ascended the 
steps and entered the hall, where he stopped upon 
hearing a child’s voice through the half open door 
of the dining-room. ' 

‘“May I wear my coral beads even if I am in 
mourning, Aunt Emily?” 

‘““Not yet, Bella,’ answered Emily’s patient yet 
energetic tones. ‘‘Put them away awhile and they ’Il 
be all the prettier when you take them out again.”’ 

“But can’t I mourn for papa and mamma just as 
well in my beads as I can without them ?”’ 

“That may be, dear, but we must consider what 
other people will say.” 

‘“* What have other people got to do with my mourn- 
ing, Aunt Emily ?” 

““T don’t know, but when you grow up you ’Il find 
that they have something to do with everything 
that concerns you.”’ 

“Well, then, I shan’t mourn at all,’’ replied Bella, 
defiantly. “If you won’t let me mourn in my coral 
beads, I shan’t mourn a single bit without them.” 

“There, there, Bella, go on with your lesson,” 
said Emily sternly, ‘‘you are a naughty girl.” 

At the sound of Ordway’s step on the threshold, 
she rose to her feet, with a frightened movement, and 
stood, white and trembling, her hand pressed to her 
quivering bosom. 


406 THE ANCIENT LAW 

“You !” she cried out sharply, and there was a 
sound in her voice that brought him with a rush 
to her side. But as he reached her she drew quickly 
away, and hiding her face in her hands, broke into 
passionate weeping. 

It was the first time that he had seen her lose her 
habit of seif-command, and while he watched her, 
he felt that each of her broken sobs was wrung 
from his own heart. 

*“‘I was a fool not to prepare you,” he said, as he 
placed a restraining hand on the awe-struck Bella. 
“You ’ve had so many shocks I ought to have known 
—TI ought to have foreseen . 

At his words she looked up instantly, drying her 
tears on a child’s dress which she was mending. 
“You came so suddenly that it startled me, that is 
all,”’ she answered. ‘I thought for a minute that 
something had happened to you—that you were an 
apparition instead of a reality. I’ve got into the 
habit of seeing ghosts of late.” 

“It’s a bad habit,’’ he replied, as he pushed Bella 
from the room and closed the door after her. ‘‘But 
I’m not a ghost, Emily, only a rough and common 
mortal. Baxter wrote me of Beverly’s death, so 
I came thinking that I might be of some little use. 
Remember what you promised me in Botetourt.” 

As he looked at her now more closely, he saw that 
the clear brown of her skin had taken a sallow tinge, 
as if she were very weary, and that there were faint 
violet shadows in the hollows beneath her eyes. 
These outward signs of her weakness moved him to 














AT TAPPAHANNOCK AGAIN 407 


a passion deeper and tenderer than he had ever 
felt before. 

‘J have not forgotten,’’ she responded, after a 
moment in which she had recovered her usual bright 
aspect, “‘but there is really nothing one can do, 
it is all so simple. The farm has already been sold 
for debt, and so I shall start in the world without 
burdens, if without wealth.”’ 

‘‘And the children? What of them?’ 

‘*That is arranged, too, very easily. Blair is fif- 
teen now, and he will be given a scholarship at college. 
The girls will go to a friend of mine, who has a board- 
ing school and has made 1nost reasonable terms.’’ 

‘“And you?” he asked in a voice that expressed 
something of the longing he could not keep back. 
‘‘Is there to be nothing but hard work for you in the - 
future?”’ 

“Tam not afraid of work,” she rejoined, smiling, . 
“IT am afraid only of reaching a place where work 
does not count.” 

As he made no answer, she talked on brightly, 
telling him of her plans for the future, of the progress 
the children had shown at their lessons, of the ar- 
rangements she had made for Aunt Mehitable and 
Micah, and of the innumerable changes which had 
occurred since he went away. So full of life, of 
energy, of hopefulness, were her face and voice that 
but for her black dress he would not have suspected 
that she had stood recently beside a deathbed. Yet 
as he listened to her, his heart was torn by the sharp 
anguish of parting, and when presently she began to 


408 THE ANCIENT LAW 


question him about his life in Botetourt, it was with 
difficulty that he forced himself to reply in a steady 
voice. All other memories of her would give way, 
he felt, before the picture of her in her black dress 
against the burning logs, with the red firelight play- 
ing over her white face and hands. 

An hour later, when he rose to go, he took both 
of her hands in his, and bending his head laid his 
burning forehead against her open palms. 

““Emily,” he said, ‘‘tell me that you understand.” 

For a momert she gazed down on him in silence. 
Then, as he raised his eyes, she kissed him so softly 
that it seemed as if a spirit had touched his lips. 

**T understand—forever,’’ she answered. 

At her words he straightened himself, as though 
a burden had fallen from him, and turning slowly 
away he went out of the house and back in the direc- 
tion of Tappahannock. 


CHAPTER III 
ALIce’s MARRIAGE 


It was after ten o’clock when he returned to 
Botetourt, and he found upon reaching home that 
Lydia had already gone to bed, though a bottle of 
cough syrup, placed conspicuously upon his bureau, 
bore mute witness to the continuance of her solici- 
tude. After so marked a consideration it seemed to 
him only decent that he should swallow a portion 
of the liquid; and he was in the act of filling the table- 
spoon she had left, when a ring at the door caused 
him to start until the medicine spilled from his hand. 
A moment later the ring was repeated more violently, 
and as he was aware that the servants had already 
left the house, he threw on his coat, and lighting a 
candle, went hurriedly out into the hall and down 
the dark staircase. The sound of a hand beating 
on the panels of the door quickened his steps almost 
into a run, and he was hardly surprised, when he had 
withdrawn the bolts, to find Alice’s face looking 
at him from the darkness outside. She was pale 
and thin, he saw at the first glance, and there was 
an angry look in her eyes, which appeared unnat- 
urally large in their violent circles, 

“I thought you would never open to me, papa,’ 
she said fretfully as she crossed the threshold. ‘‘Oh, 


409 


410 THE ANCIENT LAW 


I am so glad to see you again! Feel how cold my 
hands are, I am half frozen.”’ 
Taking her into his arms, he kissed her face passion- 
ately as it rested for an instant against his shoulder. 
‘‘Are you alone, Alice? Where is your husband?”’ 
Without answering, she raised her head, shiver- 
ing slightly, and then turning away, entered the 
library where a log fire was smouldering to ashes. — 
As he threw on more wood, she came over to the © 
hearth, and stretched out her hands to the warmth ~ 
with a nervous gesture. Then the flame shot up — 
and he saw that her beauty had gained rather than ~ 
lost by the change in her features. She appeared ~ 
taller, slenderer, more distinguished, and the vivid 
black and white of her colouring was intensified — 
by the perfect simplicity of the light cloth gown — 
and dark furs she wore. 
‘‘Oh, he’s at home,’’ she answered, breaking the — 
long silence. ‘‘I mean he’s in the house in Henry ~ 
Street, but we had a quarrel an hour after we got 
back, so I put on my hat again and came away. — 
I’m not going back — not unless he makes it bear- 
able for me to live with him. He’s such—such a _ 
brute that it’s as much as one can do to put up — 
with it, and it’s been killing me by inches for the © 
last months. I meant to write you about it, but some-_ 
how I could n’t, and yet I knew that I couldn’t 
write at all without letting you see it. Oh, he’s 
unbearable!’ she exclaimed, with a tremor of dis- — 
gust. ‘You will never know—you will never be © 
able to imagine all that I’ve been through!’ 








ALICE’S MARRIAGE 4II 


‘But is he unkind to you, Alice? Is he cruel?” 

She bared her arm with a superb disdainful ges- 
ture, and he saw three rapidly discolouring bruises 
on her delicate flesh. The sight filled him with 
loathing rather than anger, and he caught her to 
him almost fiercely as if he would hold her not only 
against Geoffrey Heath, but against herself. 

‘“You shail not go back to him,” he said, ‘‘I will 
not permit it!’ 

“The worst part is,’ she went on vehemently, 
as if he had not spoken, ‘“‘that it is about money 
—money—always money. He has millions, his law- 
yers told me so, and yet he makes me give an ac- 
count to him of every penny that I spend. I married 
him because I thought I should be rich and free, 
but he’s been hardly better than a miser since the 
day of the wedding. He wants me to dress like a 
dowdy, for all his wealth, and I can’t buy a ring that 
he does n’t raise a terrible fuss. I hate him more 
and more every day I live, but it makes no difference 
to him as long as he has me around to look at when- 
ever he pleases. I have to pay him back for every 
dollar that he gives me, and if I keep away from him 
and get cross, he holds back my allowance. Oh, 
it’s a dog’s life!’”’ she exclaimed wildly, ‘‘and it is 
killing me!” 

‘“You shan’t bear it, Alice. As long as I’m alive 
you are safe with me.” 

‘For a time I could endure it because of the trav- 
elling and the strange countries,’”’ she resumed, 
ignoring the tenderness in his voice, ‘‘but Geoffrey 


412 THE ANCIENT LAW 


was so frightfully jealous that if I so much as spoke 
to a man, he immediately flew into a rage. He 
even made me leave the opera one night in Paris 
because a Russian Grand Duke in the next box looked 
at me so hard.” 

Throwing herself into a chair, she let her furs 
slip from her shoulder&,and sat staring moodily into 


the fire. ‘‘I’ve sworn*a hundred times that I’d 
leave him,” she said, “‘and yet I’ve never done it 
until to-night.”’ x 


While she talked on feverish¥7, he untied her veil, 
which she had tossed back, and taking off her hat, 
pressed her gently against the cushions he had placed 
in her chair. 

‘You look so tired, darling, you must rest,’’ 
he said. 

‘“Rest! You may as well tell me to sleep!’ she 
exclaimed. Then her tone altered abruptly, and for 
the first time, she seemed able to penetrate beyond 
her own selfish absorption. ‘“‘Oh, you poor papa, 
how very old you look!’’ she said. 

Taking his head in her arms, she pressed it to her 
bosom and cried softly for a minute. ‘‘It’s all my 
fault—everything is my fault, but I can’t help it. 
I’m made that way.’”’ Then pushing him from her 
suddenly, she sprang to her feet and began walking 
up and down in her restless excited manner. 

‘‘Let me get you a glass of wine, Alice,’’ he said, 
‘“‘you are trembling all over.”’ 

She shook her head. ‘“‘It isn’t that—it isn’t 
that. It’s the awful—awful money. If it wasn’t 


ALICE’S MARRIAGE 413, 


for the money I could go on. Oh, I wish I’d never: 
spent asingle dollar! I wish I ’d always gone in rags!” 

Again he forced her back into her chair and again, 
after a minute of quiet, she rose to her feet and. 
broke into hysterical sobs. 

“All that I have is yours, Alice, you know that,” 
he said in the effort to soothe her, ‘‘and, besides, your 
own property is hardly less than two hundred 
thousand.” 

‘But Uncle Richard won’t give it to me,’ she 
returned angrily. ‘‘I wrote and begged him on my 
knees and he still refused to let me have a penny 
more than my regular income. It’s all tied up, he 
says, in investments, and that until lam twenty-one 
it must remain in his hands.” 

With a frantic movement, she reached for her 
muff, and drew from it a handful of crumpled papers, 
which she held out to him. “Geoffrey found these 
to-night and they brought on the quarrel,’ she said. 
“Yesterday he gave me this bracelet and he seems. 
to think I could live on it for a month!”’ She 
stretched out her arm, as she spoke, and showed him 
a glittering circle of diamonds immediately below 
the blue finger marks. ‘‘There’s a sable coat still 
that he does n’t know a thing of,”’ she finished with. 
a moan. 

Bending under the lamp, he glanced hurriedly 
over the papers she had given him, and then rose ta. 
his feet still holding them in his hand. 

“These alone come to twenty thousand dollars,. 
Alice,”’ he said with a gentle sternness. | 


414 THE ANCIENT LAW 


“‘And there are others, too,’’ she cried, making 
no effort to control her convulsive sobs. ‘There are 
others which I did n’t dare even to let him see.”’ 

For a moment he let her weep without seeking to 
arrest her tears. 

““Are you sure this will be a lesson to you?” he 
asked at last. ‘Will you be careful—very careful 
from this time?” 

““Oh, Ill never spend a penny again. I ’Il stay in 
Botetourt forever,” she promised desperately, eager 
to retrieve the immediate instant by the pledge of a 
more or less uncertain future. 

“Then we must help you,” he said. ‘“‘Among us 
all—Uncle Richard, your mother and I—it will surely 
be possible.” 

Pacified at once by his assurance, she sat down 
again and dried her eyes in her muff. 

“It seems a thousand years since I went away,”’ 
she observed, glancing about her for the first time. 
‘“‘Nothing is changed and yet everything appears to 
be different.”’ 

“And are you different also?’’ he asked. 

“‘Oh, I’m older and I’ve seen a great deal more,”’ 
she responded, with a laugh which came almost as a 
shock to him after her recent tears, ‘‘ but I still want to 
go everywhere and have everything just as I used to.” 

“But I thought you were determined to stay in 
Botetourt for the future?’ he suggested. 

“Well, so I am, I suppose,” she returned dismally, 
‘there ’s nothing else for me to do, is there?”’ 

‘Nothing that I see.” 


ALICE’S MARRIAGE 415 


‘“Then I may as well make up my mind to be mis- 
erable forever. It’s so frightfully gloomy in this 
old house, isn’t it? How is mamma?” 

“She ’s just as you left her, neither very well 
nor very sick.”’ 

““So it ’s exactly what it always was, I suppose, and 
will drive me to distraction in a few weeks. Is Dick 
away?” 

“He ’s at college, and he ’s doing finely.” 

“Of course he is—that ’s why he’s such a bore.” 

“Let Dick alone, Alice, and tell me about yourself. 
So you went to Europe immediately after I saw you 
in Washington?” 

“Two days later. I was dreadfully seasick, and 
Geoffrey was as disagreeable as he could be, and 
made all kinds of horrid jokes about me.” 

“You went straight to Paris, did n’t you?” 

‘““As soon as we landed, but Geoffrey made me 
come away in three weeks because he said I spent so 
much money.’’ Her face clouded again at the re- 
coliection of her embarrassments. ‘‘Oh, we had 
awful scenes, but I had n’t even a wedding dress, 
you know, and French dressmakers are so frightfully 
expensive. One of them charged me five thousand 
dollars for a gown—but he told me that it was really 
cheap, because he ’d sold one to another American 
the day before for twelve thousand. I don’t know 
who her husband is,’’ she added wistfully, “‘but I 
wish I were married to him.” 

The wildness of her extravagance depressed him 
even more than her excessive despair had done; and 


416 THE ANCIENT LAW 


he wondered if the vagueness of her ideas of wealth 
was due to the utter lack in her of the imagination 
which foresees results? She had lived since her girl- 
hood ina quiet Virginia town, her surroundings had 
been comparatively simple, and she had never been 
thrown, until her marriage, amid the corrupting 
influences of great wealth, yet, in spite of these 
things, she had squandered a fortune as carelessly 
as a child might have strewed pebbles upon the 
beach. Her regret at last had come not through 
realisation of her fault, but in the face of the imme- 
diate punishment which threatened her. 

“So he got you out of Paris? Well, I’m glad of 
that,’ he remarked. 

‘““He was perfectly brutal about it, I wish you 
could have heard him. Then we went down into 
Italy and did nothing for months but look at old 
pictures—at least I did, he would n’t come—and 
float around in a gondola until I almost died from 
the monotony. It was only after I found a lace 
shop, where they had the most beautiful things, 
that he would take me away, and then he insisted 
upon going to some little place up in the Alps because 
he said he didn’t suppose I could possibly pack the 
mountains into my trunks. Oh, those dreadful 
mountains! They were so glaring I could never go 
out of doors until the afternoon, and Geoffrey would 
go off climbing or shooting and leave me alone in a 
horrid little hotel where there was nobody but a 
one-eyed German army officer, and a woman mis- 
sionary who was bracing herself for South Africa. 


ALICE’S MARRIAGE 417 


She wore a knitted jersey all day and a collar which 
looked as if it would cut her head off if she ever for- 
got herself and bent her neck.’’ Her laughter, the 
delicious, irresponsible laughter of a child, rippled 
out: ‘‘She asked me one day if our blacks wore 
draperies? The ones in South Africa didn’t, and it 
made it very embarrassing sometimes, she said, 
to missionary to them. Oh, you can’t imagine 
what I suffered from her, and Geoffrey was so horrid 
about it, and insisted that she was just the sort of 
companion that I needed. So one day when he hap- 
pened to be in the writing-room where she was, I 
locked the door on the outside and threw the key down 
into the gorge. There wasn’t any locksmith nearer 
than twenty miles, and when they sent for him 
he was away. Oh, it was simply too funny for 
words! Geoffrey on the inside was trying to break 
the heavy lock and the proprietor on the outside 
was protesting that he must n’t, and all the time 
we could hear the missionary begging everybody 
please to be patient. She said ifit were required of her 
she was quite prepared to stay locked up all night, 
but Geoffrey wasn’t, so he swung himself down by 
the branches of a tree which grew near the window.” 

All her old fascination had come back to her with 
her change of mood, and he forgot to listen to her 
words while he watched the merriment sparkle in 
her deep blue eyes. It was a part of his destiny 
that he should submit to her spell, as, he supposed, 
even Geoffrey submitted at times. 

He was about to make some vague comment 


418 THE ANCIENT LAW 


upon her story, when her face changed abruptly 
into an affected gravity, and turning his head, he 
saw that Lydia had come noiselessly into the room, 
and was advancing to meet her daughter with out- 
stretched arms. 

“Why, Alice, my child, what a beautiful surprise! 
When did you come?”’ 

As Alice started forward to her embrace, Ordway 
noticed that there was an almost imperceptible 
tightening of the muscles of her body. 

“Only a few minutes ago,’”’ she replied, with the 
characteristic disregard of time which seemed, in 
some way, to belong to her inability to consider 
figures, ‘and, oh, I am so glad to be back! You are 
just as lovely as ever.” 

“Well, you are lovelier,’’ said Lydia, kissing her, 
and adding amoment afterward, as the result of her 
quick, woman’s glance, ‘‘what a charming gown!” 

Alice shrugged her shoulders, with a foreign ges- 
ture which she had picked up. ‘‘Oh, you must see 
some of my others,’’ she replied, “I wish that my 
trunks would come, but I forgot they were all sent 
to the other house, and I have n’t even a nightgown? 
Will you lend me a nightgown, mamma? I have 
some of the loveliest you ever saw which were 
embroidered for me by the nuns in a French 
convent.” 

‘So, you ll spend the night?” said Lydia, “I’m 
so glad, dear, and I’ll go up and see if your bed 
has sheets on it.’ 

“Oh, it’s not only for the night,” returned Alice, 


ALICE’S MARRIAGE 419 


defiantly, ‘‘I’ve come back for good. I’ve left 
Geoffrey, have n’t I, papa?” 

“IT hope so, darling,’ answered Ordway, coming 
for the first time over to where they stood. 

‘Left Geoffirey?’’ repeated Lydia. ‘‘Do you mean 
you ’ve separated?” 

‘“‘T mean I’m never going back again—that I de- 
test him—that I’d rather die—that I Il kill myself 
before I ’Il do it.” 

Lydia received her violence with the usual resigned 
sweetness that she presented to an impending crisis. 

‘‘But, my dear, my dear, a divorce is a horrible 
thing!’’ she wailed. 

“Well, it isn’t half so horrible as Geoffrey,” 
retorted Alice. 

Ordway, who had turned away again as Lydia 
spoke, came forward at the girl’s angry words, and 
caught the hand that she had stretched out as if to 
push her mother from her. 

‘‘Let’s be humbly grateful that we’ve got her 
back,”’ he said, smiling, ‘‘while we prepare her bed.” 


CHAPTER IV 
THE POWER OF THE BLOOD 


WHEN he came out into the hall the next morning, 
Lydia met him, in her dressing-gown, on her way 
from Alice’s room. 

‘““How is she?” he asked eagerly. ‘‘ Did she sleep?” 

““No, she was very restless, so I stayed with her. 
She went home a quarter of an hour ago.” 

“Went home? Do you mean she’s gone back 
to that brute?”’ 

A servant’s step sounded upon the staircase, 
and with her unfailing instinct for propriety, she 
drew back into his room and lowered her voice. 

““She said that she was too uncomfortable without 
her clothes and her maid, but I think she had defi- 
nitely made up her mind to return to him.’ 

‘“But when did she change? You heard her say 
last night that she would rather kill herself.” 

“Oh, you know Alice,’ she responded a little 
wearily; and for the first time it occurred to him 
that the exact knowledge of Alice might belong, 
after all, not to himself, but to her. 

“You think, then,’”’ he asked, “‘that she meant 
none of her violent protestations of last night?” 

“Tam sure that she meant them while she uttered 
them—not a minute afterward. She can’t help 


420 


THE POWER OF THE BLOOD 421 


being dramatic any more than she can help being 
beautiful.” 

“Are you positive that you said nothing to bring 
about her decision? Did you influence her in any 
way?” 

“T did nothing more that tell her that she must 
make her choice once for all—that she must either 
go back to Geoffrey Heath and keep up some kind 
of appearances, or publicly separate herself from 
him. I let her see quite plainly that a state of con- 
tinual quarrels was impossible and indecent.” 

Her point of view was so entirely sensible that 
he found himself hopelessly overpowered by its un- 
assailable logic. 

‘‘So she has decided to stick to him for better 
or for worse, then?”’ 

“For the present at all events. She realised 
fully, I think, how much she wouid be obliged to 
sacrifice by returning home?’’ 

‘Sacrifice? Good God, what?’’ he demanded. 

“Oh, well, you see, Geoffrey lives in a fashion 
that is rather grand for Botetourt. He travels a 
great deal, and he makes her gorgeous presents 
when he is in a good humour. She seemed to feel 
that if we could only settle these bills for her, she 
would be able to bring about a satisfactory adjust- 
ment. I was surprised to find how quietly she took 
it all this morning. She had forgotten entirely, I 
believe, the scene she made downstairs last night.” 

This was his old Alice,he reflected in baffled 
silence, and apparently he would never attain to the 


422 THE ANCIENT LAW 


critical judgment of her. Well, in any case, he was 
able to do justice to Lydia’s admirable detachment. 

‘“‘I suppose I may have a talk with Heath any- 
way?” he said at last. 

“She particularly begs you not to, and I feel 
strongly that she is right.” 

“Does she expect me to sit quietly by and see it 
go on torever? Why, there were bruises on her 
arm that he had made with his fingers.” 

Lydia paled as she always did when one of the 
brutal facts of life was thrust on her notice. 

“Oh, she doesn’t think that will happen again. 
It appears that she had lost her temper and tried her 
best to infuriate him. He is still very much in love 
with her at times, and she hopes that by a little 
diplomacy she may be able to arrange matters 
between them.’ 

“Diplomacy with that insufferable cad! Pshaw!”’ 

Lydia sighed, not in exasperation, but with the 
martyr’s forbearance. 

““It is really a crisis in Alice’s life,’’ she said, ‘‘and 
we must treat it with seriousness.”’ 

‘‘T was never more serious in my life. I’m mel- 
ancholy. I’m abject.” 

“Last night she told me that Geoffrey threatened 
to go West and get a divorce, and this frightened her.” 

“But I thought it was the very thing she wanted,” 
he urged in bewilderment. ‘‘Hadn’t she left him 
last night for good and all?” 

“She might leave him, but she could not give up 
his money. It is impossible, I suppose, for you to 


THE POWER OF THE BLOOD 423 


realise her complete dependence upon wealth-—the 
absurdity of her ideas about the value of money. 
Why, her income of five thousand which Uncle 
Richard allows her would not last her a month.” 

“T realised a little of this when I glanced over 
those bills she gave me.”’ 

‘*Of course we shall pay those ourselves, but what 
is twenty thousand dollars to her, when Geoffrey 
seems to have paid out a hundred thousand already. 
He began, I can see, by being very generous, but she 
confessed to me this morning that other bills were 
still to come in which she would not dare to let him 
see. I told her that she must try to meet these out 
of her income, and that we would reduce our livin 
experises as much as possible in order to pay those 
she gave you.” 

‘I shall ask Uncle Richard to advance this out of 
my personal property,’’ he said. 

“But he will not doit. You know how scrupulous 
he is about all such matters, and he told me the other 
day that your father’s will had clearly stated that 
the money was not to be touched unless he should 
deem it for your interest to turn it over to you.” 

Her command of the business situation amazed 
him, until he remembered her long conversations 
with Richard Ordway, whose interests were confined 
within strictly professional limits. His fatal mistake 
in the past, he saw now, was that he had approached 
her, not as a fellow mortal, but as a divinity; for the 
farther he receded from the attitude of worship, the 
more was he able to appreciate the quality of her prac- 


424 THE ANCIENT LAW 


tical virtues. In spite of her poetic exterior, it was 
in the rosy glow cf romance that she showed now as 
barest of attractions. The bottle of cough syrup 
on his bureau still testified to her ability to sympa- 
thise in all cases where the imagination was not 
required to lend its healing insight. 

‘But surely it is to my interest to save Alice,” he 
said after a pause. 

“I think he will feel that it must be done by the 
family, by us all,” she answered, ‘“‘he has always had 
so keen a sense of honour in little things.” 

An hour later, when he broached the subject to 
Richard in his office, he found that Lydia was right, 
as usual, in her prediction; and with a flash or ironic 
humour, he pictured her as enthroned above his 
destiny, like a fourth fate who spun the unyielding 
thread of common sense. 

‘“‘Of course the debt must be paid if it is a condition 
of Alice’s reconciliation with her husband,”’ said 
the old man, ‘‘but I shall certainly not sacrifice 
your securities in order to do it. Such an act would 
be directly against the terms of your father’s will.” 

There was no further concession to be had from him, 
so Daniel turned to his work, half in disappointment, 
half in admiration of his uncle’s loyalty to the written 
word. | 

When he went home to luncheon Lydia told him 
that she had seen Alice, who had appeared seriously 
disturbed, though she had shown her, with evident 
enjoyment, a number of exquisite Paris gowns. 
““She had a sable coat, also, in her closet, which 


THE POWER OF THE BLOOD 425 


could not have cost iess, I should have supposed, 
than forty thousand dollars—the kind of coat that 
a Russian Grand Duchess might have worn—but 
when I spoke of it, she grew very much depressed 
and changed the subject. Did you talk to Uncle 
Richard? and was I right?”’ 

“You ’re always right,” he admitted despond- 
ently, ‘but do you think, then, that I’d better not 
see Alice to-day?” 

** Perhaps it would be wiser to wait until to-miprrow. 
Geoffrey is in a very difficult humour, she says, 
more brutally indifferent to her than he has been 
since her marriage.’ 

“Ts n’t that all the more reason she ought to have 
her family about her?”’ 

“She says not: It’s easier to deal with him, she 
feels, alone—and any way Uncle Richard will call 
there this afternoon.” 

‘“‘Oh, Uncle Richard!” he groaned, as he went out. 

In the evening there was no news beyond a reas- 
suring visit from Richard Ordway, who stopped by, 
for ten minutes, on his way from an interview with 
Geoffrey Heath. ‘To tell the truth I found him 
less obstinate than I had expected,” he said, ‘“‘and 
there ’s no doubt, I fear, that he has some show of 
justice upon his side. He has agreed now to make 
Alice a very liberal allowance from the first of April, 
provided she will promise to make no more bills, and 
to live until then within her own income. He told 
me that he was obliged to retrench for the next six 
months in order to meet his obligations without 


426 THE ANCIENT LAW 


touching his investments. It seems that he had 
bought very largely on margin, and the shrinkages 
in stocks has forced him to pay out a great deal of 
money recently.” 

“I knew you would manage it, Uncle, I relied 
on you absolutely,” said Lydia, sweetly. 

“fT did only my duty, my child,’’ he responded, 
as he held out his hand. 

The one good resulp of the anxiety of the last 
twenty-four hours—the fact that it had brought 
Lydia and himself into a kind of human connection 
—had departed, Daniel observed, when he sat down 
to dinner, separated from her by six yeliow candle 
shades and a bowl of gorgeous chrysanthemums. 
After a casual comment upon the soup, and the 
pleasant reminder that Dick would be home for 
Thanksgiving, the old uncomfortable silence fell 
between them. She had just remarked that the 
roast was a little overdone, and he had agreed with 
her from sheer politeness, when a sharp ring at 
the bell sent the old Negro butler hurrying out 
into the hail, An instant later there was a sound 
of rapid footsteps, and Alice, wearing a long coat, 
which slipped from her bare shoulders as she entered, 
came rapidly forward and threw herseif into Ordway’s 
arms, with an uncontrollable burst of tears. 

““My child, my child, what is it?”’ he questioned, 
while Lydia, rising from the table with a disturbed 
face, but an unruffled manner, remarked to the butler 
that he need not serve the dessert. 

““Come into the library, Alice, it is quieter there,” 


THE POWER OF THE BLOOD 427 


she said, putting her arm about her daughter, with 
an authoritative pressure. 

“OQ, papa, I will never see him again! You 
must tell him that. I shall never see him again,” | 
she cried, regardless alike of Lydia’s entreaties and the 
restraining presence of the butler. ‘‘Go to him to- 
night and tell him that I will never—never go back.” 

“Til tell him, Alice, and I Il do it with a great 
deal of pleasure,’’ he answered soothingly, as he led 
her into the library and closed the door. 

‘But you must go at once. I want him to know 
it at once.” 

‘“‘T ll go this very hour—I ’ll go this very minute, 
if you honestly mean it.” 

‘‘Would it not be better to wait until to-morrow, 
Alice?”’ suggested Lydia. ‘‘Then you wili have time 
to quiet down and to see things rationally.” 

‘IT don’t want to quiet down,’”’ sobbed Alice, 
angrily, ‘‘I want him to know now—this very 
instant—that he has gone too far—that I will not 
stand it. He told me a minute ago—the beast!— 
that he ’d like to see the man who would be fool 
enough to keep me—that if I went he ’d find a hand- 
somer woman within a week!” 

“Well, I Il see him, darling,” said Ordway. ‘Sit 
here with your mother, and have a good cry and 
talk things over.” 

As he spoke he opened the door and went out into 
the hall, where he got into his overcoat. 

‘“Remember last night and don’t say too much, 
_Daniel,’’ urged Lydia in a warning whisper, coming 


428 THE ANCIENT LAW 


after him, “‘she is quite hysterical now and does not 
realise what she is saying.”’ 

“‘Oh, I ’Il remember,’’ he returned, and a minute 
later, he closed the front door behind him. 

On his way to the Heath house in Henry Street, 
he planned dispassionately his part in the coming 
interview, and he resolved that he would state 
Alice’s position with as little show of feeling as it 
was possible for him to express. He would tell Heath 
candidly that, with his consent, Alice should never 
return to him, but he would say this in a perfectly 
quiet and inoffensive manner. If there was to be 
a scene, he concluded calmly, it should be made 
entirely by Geoffrey. Then, as he went on, he said 
to himself, that he had grown tired and old, and that 
he lacked now the decision which should carry one 
triumphantly over a step like this. Even his anger 
against Alice’s husband had given way to a dragging 
weariness, which seemed to hold him back as he 
ascended the brown-stone steps and laid his hand on 
the door bell. When the door was opened, and he fol- 
lowed the servant through the long hall, ornamented 
by marble statues, to the smoking-room at the end, he 
was conscious again of that sense of utter incapacity 
which had been bred in him by his life in Botetourt. 

Geoffrey, after a full dinner, was lounging, with 
a cigar and a decanter of brandy, over a wood fire, 
and as his visitor entered he rose from his chair with 
a lazy shake of his whole person. 

““T don’t believe I ’ve ever met you before, Mr. Ord- 
way,’ he remarked, as he held out his hand, ‘‘though 


THE POWER OF THE BLOOD 2g, 


I’ve known you by sight for several years. Won't. 
you sit down?’’ With a single gesture he motioned 
to a chair and indicated the cigars and the brandy 
on a little table at his right hand. 

At his first glance Ordway had observed that he 
had been in a rage or drinking heavily— probably 
both; and he was seized by a sudden terror at the 
thought that Alice had been so lately at the mercy 
of this large red and black male animal. Yet, in spite 
of the disgust with which the man inspired him, he was 
forced to admit that as far as amere physical specimen 
went, he had rarely seen his equal. His body was. 
superbly built, and but for his sullen and brutal. 
expression, his face would have been remarkable for 
its masculine beauty. 

“No, I won’t sit down, thank you,” replied 
Ordway, after a short pause. ‘‘What I have to say 
can be said better standing, I think.’’ 

“Then fire away!”’ returned Geoffrey, with a coarse: 
laugh. ‘It’s about Alice, I suppose, and it’s most 
likely some darn rot she’s sent you with.” 

“It’s probably less rot than you imagine. I 
have taken it upon myself to forbid her returning 
to you. Your treatment of her has made it im- 
possible that she should remain in your house.’’ 

“Well, I’ve treated her a damned sight better 
than she deserved,”’ rejoined Geoffrey, scowling, 
while his face, inflamed by the brandy he had drunk, 
burned to a dull red; “it isn’t her fault, I can tell. 
you, that she hasn’t put me into the poorhouse. 
in six months.”’ 


430 THE ANCIENT LAW 


“T admit that she has been very extravagant, 
and so does she.”’ 

“Extravagant? So that is what you call it, is it? 
Well, she spent more in three weeks in Paris than 
my father did in his whole lifetime. I paid out a 
hundred thousand for her, and even then I could 
hardly get her away. But I won’t pay the bills any 
longer, I’ve told her that. They may go into court 
about it and get their money however they can.”’ 

‘“‘In the future there will be no question of that.’ 

“You think so, do you?) Now I ’ll bet you what- 
ever you please that she’s back here in this house 
again before the weekis up. She knows on which side 
her bread is buttered, and she won’t stay in that 
dull old place, not for all you ’re worth.” 

‘“‘She shall never return to you with my consent.” 

‘‘Did she wait for that to marry me?’’ demanded 
Geoffrey, laughing uproariously at his wit, ‘“‘though 
I can tell you now, that it makes precious little 
difference to me whether she comes or stays.”’ 

‘“‘She shall never do it,’ said Ordway, losing his 
temper. ‘Then as he uttered the words, he remem- 
bered Lydia’s warning and added more quietly, 
““she shall never do it if I can help it.”’ 

“It makes precious little difference to me,”’ re- 
peated Geoffrey, ‘“‘but she ll be a blamed fool if 
she doesn’t, and for all her foolishness, she isn’t 
so big a fool as you think her.”’ 

‘““She has been wrong in her extravagance, as I 
said before, but she is very young, and her childish- 
ness is no excuse for your brutality.” 


THE POWER OF THE BLOOD 435 


Rage, or the brandy, or both together, flamed up 
hotly in Geoffrey’s face. | 

‘““T’d like to know what right you have to talk 
about brutality?’’ he sneered. 

“I’ve the right of any man to keep another from 
ill-treating his daughter.”’ 

“Well, you’re a nice one with your history to 
put on these highfaluting, righteous airs, are a’t 
your”’ 

For an instant the unutterable disgust in Ord- 
way’s mind was like physical nausea. What use 
was it, after all, to bandy speeches, he questioned, 
with a mere drunken animal? His revulsion of 
feeling had moved him to take a step toward the 
door, when the sound of the words Geoffrey uttered 
caused him to stop abruptly and stand listening. 

‘“Much good you ’ll do her when she hears about 
that woman you’ve been keeping down at Tappa- 
hannock. As if I didn’t know that you’d 
been running back there again after that Brooke 
girl 

The words were choked back in his throat, for 
before they had passed his lips Ordway had 
swung quickly round and struck him full in the 
mouth. 

With the blow it seemed to Daniel that all the 
violence in his nature was loosened. A sensation 
that was like the joy of health, of youth, of manhood, 
rushed through his veins, and in the singie exalted 
instant when he looked down on Geoffrey’s pros- 
trate figure, he felt himself to be not only trium- 





432+ THE ANCIENT LAW 


phant, but immortal. All that his vears of self- 
sacrifice had not done for him was accomplished 
by that explosive rush of energy through his arm. 

There was blood on his hand and as he glanced 
down, he saw that Geoffrey, with a bleeding mouth, 
was struggling, dazed and half drunk, to his feet. 
Ordway looked at him and laughed—the laugh of the 
boastful and victorious brute. Then turning quickly, 
he took up his hat and went out of the house and 
down into the street. 

The physical exhilaration produced by the mus- 
cular effort was still tingling through his body, and 
while it lasted he felt younger, stronger, and possessed 
of a courage that was almost sublime. When he 
reached home and entered the library where Lydia 
and Alice were sitting together, there was a boyish 
lightness and confidence in his step. 

‘‘Oh, papa!” cried Alice, standing up, ‘‘tell me 
about it. What did he do?” 

Ordway laughed again, the same laugh with which 
he had looked down on Geoffrey lying half stunned 
at his feet. 

‘““T did n’t wait to see,’’ he answered, ‘‘ but I rather 
think he got up off the floor.” 

“You mean you knocked him down?” asked 
Lydia, in an astonishment that left her breathless. 

“T cut his mouth, I’m sure,’ he replied, wiping 
his hand from which the blood ran, ‘‘and I hope I 
knocked out one or two of his teeth.”’ 

Then the exhilaration faded as quickly as it had 
come, for as Lydia looked up at him, while he stood 


THE POWER OF THE BLOOD 433 


there wiping the blood from his bruised knuckles, 
he saw, for the first time since his return to Bote- 
tourt, that there was admiration in her eyes. So 
it was the brute, after all, and not the spirit that 
had triumphed over her. 


CHAPTER V 
THE HovusE or DREAMS 


From that night there was a new element in 
Lydia’s relation to him, an increased consideration, 
almost a deference, as if, for the first time, he had 
shown himself capable of commanding her respect. 
This change, which would have pleased him, doubt- 
less, twenty years before, had only the effect now 
of adding to his depression, for he saw in it a tribute 
from his wife not to his higher, but to his lower 
nature. All his patient ideals, all his daily self- 
sacrifice, had not touched her as had that one in- 
stant’s violence; and it occurred to him, with a grow- 
ing recognition of the hopeless inconsistency of life, 
that if he had treated her with less delicacy, less 
generosity, if he had walked roughshod over her 
feminine scruples, instead of yielding to them, she 
might have entertained for him by this time quite a 
wholesome wifely regard. Then the mere possi- 
bility disgusted him, and he saw that to have com- 
promised with her upon any lower plane would have 
been always morally repugnant to him. After all,the 
dominion of the brute was not what he was seeking. 

On the morning after his scene with Geoffrey, 
Alice came to him and begged for the minutest 
particulars of the quarrel. She wanted to know how 


434 


THE HOUSE OF DREAMS 435 


it had begun? If Geoffrey had been really horrible? 
And if he had noticed the new bronze dragon she 
had bought for the hall? Upon his replying that 
he had not, she seemed disappointed, he thought, 
for a minute. | 

“It’s very fine,’ she said, “I bought it from 
what ’s-his-name, that famous man in Paris? If 
I ever have money enough I shall get the match to 
it, so there ll be the pair of them.’’ Then seeing his 
look of astonishment, she hastened to correct the 
impression she had made. ‘Of course, I mean that 
I’d like to have done it, if I had been going to live 
there.”’ 

“It would take more than a bronze dragon, or a 
pair of them, to make that house a home, dear,’’ was 
his only comment. 

‘‘But it’s very handsome,”’ she remarked after a 
moment, ‘‘everything in it is so much more costly 
than the things here.’”” He made no rejoinder, 
and she added with vehemence, “but of course, I 
would n’t go back, not even if it were a palace!” 

Then a charming merriment seized her, and she 
clung to him and kissed him and called him a dozen 
silly pet names. ‘“‘No, she won’t ever, ever play 
in that horrid old house again,’ she sang gaily 
between her kisses. 

For several days these exuberant spirits lasted, 
and then he prepared himself to meet the inevitable 
reaction. Her looks drooped, she lost her colour 
and grew obviously bored, and in the end she com- 
plained openly that there was nothing for her to do 


436 THE ANCIENT LAW 


in the house, and that she could n’t go out of doors 
because. she hadn’t the proper clothes. To his 
reminder that it was she herself who had pre- 
vented his sending for her trunks, she _ replied 
that there was plenty of time, and that, “‘besides 
nobody could pack them unless she was there to 
overlook it.” 

“If anybody is obliged to go back there, for 
heaven’s sake, let me be the one,’”’ he urged des- 
perately at last. 

“To knockout more of poor Geoffrey’s teeth? Oh, 
you naughty, naughty, papa!’’—she cried, lifting 
a reproving finger. The next instant her laughter 
bubbled out at the delightful picture of ‘“‘papa in 
the midst of her Paris gowns. I’d be so afraid 
you ’d roll up Geoffrey in my precious laces,’ she 
protested, half seriously. 

For a week nothing more was said on the subject, 
and then she remarked irritably that her room was 
cold and she had n’t her quilted silk dressing-gown. 
When he asked her to ride with him, she declared 
that her old habit was too tight for her and her new 
one was at the other house. When he suggested 
driving instead, she replied that she hadn’t her 
fur coat and she would certainly freeze without it. 
At last one bright, cold day, when he came up to 
luncheon, Lydia told him, with her strange calmness, 
that Alice had gone back to her husband. 

‘‘T knew it would come in time,” she said, and he 
bowed again before her unerring prescience. 

‘Do you mean to tell me that she’s willing to 


THE HOUSE OF DREAMS 437 


put up with Heath for the sake of a little extra 
luxury?’ he demanded. ; 

“Oh, that’s a part of it. She likes the newness. 
of the house and the air of costliness about it, but 
most of all, she feels that she could never settle down 
to our monotonous way of living. Geoffrey prom- 
ised her to take her to Europe again in the summer 
and I think she began to grow restless when it ap- 
peared that she might have to give it up.” 

“But one of us could have taken her to Europe, 
if that ’s all she wanted. You could have gone with 
her.”’ 

*“Not in Alice’s way, we could never have afforded 
it. She told me this when I offered to go with her 
if she would definitely separate from Geofirey.”’ 

“Then you didn’t want her to go back? You 
did n’t encourage it?” 

“IT encouraged her to behave with decency—and 
this is n’t decent.” 

““No, Iadmit that. It decidedly is not.” 

““Yet we have no assurance that she won’t fly in 
upon us at dinner to-night, with all the servants 
about,’ she reflected mournfully. 

His awful levity broke out as it always did when- 
ever she invoked the sanctity of convention. 

“In that case had n’t we better serve ourselves 
until she has made up her mind?”’ he inquired. 

But the submission of the martyr is proof even 
against caustic wit, and she looked at him, after a 
minute, with a smile of infinite patience. 

“For myself I can bear anything,’’ she answered, 


438 THE ANCIENT LAW 


‘but I feel that for her it is shocking to make things 
so public.”’ 

It was shocking. In spite of his flippancy he felt 
the vulgarity of it as acutely as she felt it; and he was 
conscious of something closely akin to relief, when 
Richard Ordway dropped in after dinner to tell them 
that Alice and Geoffrey had come to a complete 
reconciliation. 

‘But will it last?’’ Lydia questioned, in an uneasy 
voice. 

‘““We ’ll hope so at all events,’”’ replied the old 
man, “‘they appeared certainly to be very friendly 
when I came away. Whatever happens it is surely 
to Alice’s interest that she should be kept out of 
a public scandal.”’ 

They were still discussing the matter, after Richard 
had gone, when the girl herself ran in, bringing 
Geoffrey, and fairly brilliant with life and spirits. 

‘““We ’ve decided to forget everything disagree- 
able,’’ she said, ‘‘we’re going to begin over again 
and be nice and jolly, and if I don’t spend too much 
money, we are going to Egyptin April.”’ 

“If you ’re happy, then I’m satisfied,’ returned 
Ordway, and he held out his hand to Geoffrey by 
way of apology. 

To do the young man justice, he appeared to 
cherish no resentment for the blow, though he still 
bore a scar on his upper lip. He looked heavy and 
handsome, and rather amiable in a dull way, and the 
one discovery Daniel made about him was that 
he entertained a profound admiration for Richard 


THE HOUSE OF DREAMS 439 


Ordway. Still, when everybody in Botetourt shared 
his sentiment, this was hardly deserving of notice. 

As the weeks went on it looked as if peace were 
really restored, and even. Lydia’s face lost its anx- 
ious foreboding, when she gazed on the assembled 
family at Thanksgiving. Dick had grown into a 
quiet, distinguished looking young fellow, more than 
ever like his Uncle Richard, and it was touching to 
watch his devotion to his delicate mother. At least 
Lydia possessed one enduring consolation in life, 
Ordway reflected, with a rush of gratitude. 

In the afternoon Alice drove with him out into 
the country, along the pale brown November roads, 
and he felt, while he sat beside her, with her hand 
clasped tightly in his under the fur robe, that she 
was again the daughter of his dreams, who had 
flown to his arms in the terrible day of his home- 
coming. She was in one of her rare moods of seri- 
ousness, and when she lifted her eyes to his, it seemed 
to him that they held a new softness, a deeper blueness. 
Something in her face brought back to him the mem- 
ory of Emily as she had looked down at him when 
he knelt before her: and again he was aware of some 
subtle link which bound together in his thoughts 
the two women whom he loved. 

‘“There ’s something I’ve wanted to tell you, 
papa, first of all,’ said Alice, pressing his hand, ‘I 
want you to know it before anybody else because 
you ve always loved me and stood by me from the 
beginning. Now shut your eyes while I tell you, 
and hold fast to my hand. O papa, there ’s to be 


440 THE ANCIENT LAW 


really and truly a baby in the spring, and even if 
it ’s a boy—lI hope it will be a girl—you ’Il promise to 
love it and be good to it, won’t you?”’ 

“‘Love your child? Alice, my darling!’’ he cried, 
and his voice broke. 

She raised her hand to his cheek with a little 
caressing gesture, which had always been character- | 
istic of her, and as he opened his eyes upon her, her 
beauty shone, he thought, with a light that blinded 
him. 

‘“‘T hope it will be a little girl with blue eyes and 
fair hair like mamma’s,’’ she resumed softly. ‘It 
will be better than playing with dolls, won’t it? 
I always loved dolls, you know. Do you remember 
the big wax doll you gave me when I was six years 
old, and how her voice got out of order and she used 
to crow instead of talking? Well, I kept her for years - 
and years, and even after I was a big girl, and wore 
long dresses, and did up my hair, I used to take her 
out sometimes and put on her clothes. Only I was 
ashamed of it and used to lock the door so no one 
could see me. But this little girl will be real, you 
know, and that’s ever so much more fun, is n’t it? 
And you shall help teach her to walk, and to ride 
when she’s big enough; and Ill dress her in the 
loveliest dresses, with French embroidered ruffles, and 
a little blue bonnet with bunches of feathers, like 
one in Paris. Only she can’t wear that until she’s 
five years old, can she?”’ 

‘‘And now you will have something to think of, 
Alice, you will be bored no longer?”’ 


THE HOUSE OF DREAMS 441 


*T shall enjoy buying the little things so much, 
but it’s too soon yet to plan about them. Papa, 
do you think Geoffrey will fuss about money when 
he hears this?”’ 

““T hope not, dear, but you must be careful. The 
baby won’t need to be extravagant, just at first.”’ 

“But she must have pretty clothes, of course, 
papa. It would n’t be kind to the little thing to make 
her look ugly, would it?”’ 

‘“‘Are simple things always ugly?” 

“Oh, but they cost just as much if they ’re fine 
—and I had beautiful clothes whenI came. Mamma 
has told me about them.”’ 3 

She ran on breathlessly, radiant with the promise 
of motherhood, dwelling in fancy upon the small 
blond ideal her imagination had conjured into life. 

It was dark when they returned to town, and 
when Daniel entered his door, after leaving Alice in 
Henry Street, he found that the lamps were already 
lit in the library. As he passed up the staircase, he 
glanced into the room, and saw that Lydia and Dick 
were sitting together before the fire, the boy resting 
his head on her knees, while her fragile hand played 
caressingly with his hair. They did not look up 
at his footsteps, and his heart was so warm with 
happiness that even the picture of mother and son 
in the firelit room appeared dim beside it. 

When he opened his door he found a bright fire in 
his grate, and throwing off his coat, he sat down 
in an easy chair with his eyes on the glowing coals. 
The beneficent vision that he had brought home with 


442 THE ANCIENT LAW 


him was reflected now in the red heart of the fire, 
and while he gazed on it, he told himself that the years 
of his loneliness, and his inner impoverishment, were 
ended forever. The path of age showed to him no 
longer as hard and destitute, but as a peaceful road 
along which he might travel hopefully with young feet 
to keep him company. With a longing, which no 
excess of the imagination could exhaust, he saw 
Alice’s child as she had seen it in her maternal rap- 
ture—as something immortally young and fair and 
innocent. He thought of the moment so long ago, 
when they had first piaced Alice in his arms, and it 
seemed to him that this unborn child was only a 
renewal of the one he had held that day—that he 
would reach out his arms to it with that same half 
human, half mystic passion. Even to-day he could 
almost feel the soft pressure of her little body, and 
he hardly knew whether it was the body of Alice 
or of her child. Then suddenly it seemed to him 
that the reality faded from his consciousness and 
the dream began, for while he sat there he heard 
the patter of the little feet across his floor, and felt 
the little hands creep softly over his lips and brow. 
Oh, the little hands that would bring healing and 
love in their touch! , 

And he understood as he looked forward now 
into the dreaded future, that the age to which he 
was travelling was only an immortal youth. 


CHAPTER VI 
Tue ULTIMATE CHOICE 


On CuristMAs EVE a heavy snowstorm set in, and 
as there was but little work in the office that day, 
he took a long walk into the country before going home 
to luncheon. By the time he came back to town 
the ground was already covered with snow, which 
was blown by a high wind into deep dritts against 
the houses. Through the thick, whirling flakes the 
poplars stood out like white ghosts of trees, each 
branch outlined in a delicate tracery, and where the 
skeletons of last spring’s flowers still clung to the 
boughs, the tiny cups were crowned with clusters of 
frozen blossoms. 

As he passed Richard’s house, the sight of his 
aunt’s fair head at the window arrested his steps, 
and going inside, he found her filling yarn stockings 
for twenty poor children, to whose homes she went 
every Christmas Eve. The toys and the bright 
tarleton bags of candy scattered about the room gave 
it an air that was almost festive; and for a few min- 
utes he stayed with her, watching the glow of pleasure 
in her small, pale face, while he heiped stuff the 
toes of the varn stockings with oranges and nuts. 
As he stood there, surrounded by the little gifts, he 
feit, for the first time since his childhood, the full 


443 


444 THE ANCIENT LAW 


significance of Christmas—of its cheer, its mirth and 
its solemnity. 

‘‘I am to have a tree at twelve o’clock to-morrow. 
Will you come?” she asked wistfully, and he pro- 
mised, with a smile, before he left her and went out 
again into the storm. 

In the street a crowd of boys were snowballing 
one another, and as he passed a ball struck him, 
knocking his hat into a drift. Turning in pretended 
fury, he plunged into the thick of the battle, and 
when he retreated some minutes afterward, he was 
powdered from head to foot with dry, feathery 
flakes. When he reached home, he discovered, 
with dismay, that he left patches of white on the 
carpet from the door to the upper landing. After 
he had entered his room he shook the snow from his 
clothes, and then looking at his watch, saw to his 
surprise, that luncheon must have been over for at 
least an hour. In a little while, he told himself, 
he would go downstairs and demand something to 
eat from the old butler; but the hearth was so bright 
and warm that after sinking into his accustomed 
chair, he found that it was almost impossible to 
make the effort to go out. In a moment a delicious 
drowsiness crept over him, and he fell presently 
asleep, while the cigar he had lighted burned slowly 
out in his hand. 

The sound of the opening and closing door brought 
him suddenly awake with a throb of pain. The 
gray light from the windows, beyond which the snow 
fell heavily, was obscured by the figure of Lydia, 


THE ULTIMATE CHOICE 445: 


who seemed to spring upon him out of some dim 
mist of sleep. At first he saw only her pale face and 
white outstretched hands; then as she came rapidly 
forward and dropped on her knees in the firelight, he 
saw that her face was convulsed with weeping and 
her eyes red and swollen. For the first time in his 
life, it occurred to him with a curious quickness of per- 
‘ception, he looked upon the naked soul of the woman, 
with her last rag of conventionality stripped from 
her. In the shock of the surprise, he half rose to his. 
feet, and then sank back helplessly, putting out 
his hand as if he would push her away from him. 

‘‘Lydia,” he said, ‘‘don’t keep me waiting. Tell 
me at once.”’ 

She tried to speak, and he heard her voice strangle 
like a live thing in her throat. 

‘Is Alice dead?”’ he asked quietly, ‘for is Dick?”’ 

At this she appeared to regain control of herself 
and he watched the mask of her impenetrable 
reserve close over her features. “It is not that— 
nobody is dead—it is worse,’’ she answered in a 
subdued and lifeless voice. 

‘“Worse?’’ The word stunned him, and he stared 
at her blankly, like a person whose mind has suddenly 
given way. 

‘‘ Alice is in my room,’’ she went on, when he had 
paused, “I left her with Uncle Richard while I 
came here tolookfor you. We didnot hear you come 
in. I thought you were still out.” 

Her manner, even more than her words, impressed 
him only as an evasion of the thing in her mind, 


446 THE ANCIENT LAW 


and seizing her hands almost roughly, he drew her 
forward until he could look closely into her face. 

“‘For God’s sake—speak!”’ he commanded. 

But with his grasp all animation appeared to go 
out of her, and she fell across his knees in an immov- 
able weight, while her eyes still gazed up at him. 

“Tf you can’t tell me I must go to Uncle Richard,” 
he added. 

As he attempted to rise she put out her hands to 
restrain him, and in the midst of his suspense, he 
was amazed at the strength there was in a creature 
so slight and fragile. 

‘““Uncle Richard has just come to tell us,’”’ she said 
in a whisper. “‘A lawyer—a detective—somebody. 
I can’t remember who it is—has come down from 
New York to see Geoffrey about a check signed ir 
his name, which was returned to the bank there. 
At the first glance it was seen to be—to be not in his 
writing. When it was sent to him, after the bank 
had declined to honour it, he declared it to be a for- 
gery and sent it back to them at once. It is nowin 
their hands 4 

“To whom was it drawn?” he asked so quietly 
that his voice sounded in his own ears like the voice 
of a stranger. 

“To Damon & Hanska, furriers in Fifth Avenue, 
and it was sent in payment for a sable coat which 
Alice had bought. They had already begun a suit, 
it seems, to recover the money.” 

As she finished he rose slowly to his feet, and 
stood staring at the snow which fell heavily beyond 





THE ULTIMATE CHOICE 445 


the window. The twisted bough of a poplar tree just 
outside was rocking back and forth with a creaking 
noise, and presently, as his ears grew accustomed te 
the silence in the room, he heard the loud monoto- 
nous ticking of the clock on the mantel, which 
seemed to grow more distinct with each minute that 
the hands travelled. Lydia had slipped from his 
grasp as he rose, and lay now with her face buried 
in the cushions of the chair. It wasa terrible thing for 
Lydia, he thought suddenly, as he looked down on her. 

‘‘And Geoffrey Heath?” he asked, repeating the 
question in a raised voice when she did not answer. 

“‘Oh, what can we expect of him? What can 
we expect?’’ she demanded, with a shudder. ‘‘Alice 
is sure that he hates her, that he would seize any 
excuse to divorce her, to outrage her publicly. He 
will do nothing—nothing—nothing,” she said, rising 
to her feet, ‘‘ he has returned the check to the bank, 
and denied openly all knowledge of it. After some 
violent words with Alico in the lawyer’s presence, 
he declared to them both that he did not care in the 
least what steps were taken—that he had washeé 
his hands of her and of the whole affair. She is 
half insane with terror of a prosecution, and can 
hardly speak coherently. Oh, I wonder why one 
ever has children?” she exclaimed in anguish. 

With her last words it seemed to him that the 
barrier which had separated him from Lydia had 
crumbled suddenly to ruins between them. The 
space which love could not bridge was spanned by 
pity; and crossing to where she stood, he put his arms 


448 THE ANCIENT LAW 


about her, while shé bowed her head on his breast 
and wept. 

‘Poor girl! poor girl!” he said softly, and then 
putting her from him, he went out of the room and 
closed the door gently upon her grief. 

From across the hall the sound of smothered sobs 
came to him, and entering Lydia’s room, he saw 
Alice clinging hysterically to Richard’s arm. As she 
looked round at his footsteps, her face showed so 
old and haggard between the splendid masses of her 
hair, that he could hardly believe for a minute that 
this half distraught creature was really his daughter. 
For an instant he was held dumb by the horror of 
it; then the silence was broken by the cry with which 
Alice threw herself into his arms. Once before she 
had rushed to his breast with the same word on her 
lips, he remembered. 

‘‘O papa, you will help me! You must help me!” 
she cried. ‘‘Oh, make them tell you all so that 
you may help me!”’ 

‘‘They have told me—your mother has told me, 
Alice,” he answered, seeking in vain to release him- 
self from the frantic grasp of her arms. 

“Then you will make Geoffrey understand,’’ she 


returned, almost angrily. ‘“‘ You will make Geoffrey 
understand that it was not my fault—that I could n’t 
help it.” 


Richard Ordway turned from the window, through 
which he had been looking, and taking her fingers, 
which were closed in a vice-like pressure ihe 
Daniel’s arm, pried them forcibly apart. 


THE ULTIMATE CHOICE 449 


‘*Look at me, Alice,’’ he said sternly, ‘‘and answer 
the question that I asked you. What did you say 
to Geoffrey when he spoke to you in the lawyer’s 
presence? Did you deny, then, that you had signed 
the check? Don’t struggle so, I must hear what you 
told them.”’ 

But she only writhed in his hold, straining her 
arms and her neck in the direction of Daniel. 

‘‘He was very cruel,’’ she replied at last, ‘‘they 
were both very cruel. I don’t know what I said, 
I was so frightened. Geoffrey hurt me terribly 
—he hurt me terribly,’”’ she whimpered like a child, 
and as she turned toward Daniel, he saw her blood- 
less gum, from which her lower lip had quivered and 


dropped. 
“I must know what you told them, Alice,’ re- 
peated the old man in an unmoved tone. ‘I can 


do nothing to help you, if you will not speak the 
truth.”” Even when her body struggled in his grasp, 
no muscle altered in the stern face he bent 
above her. 

‘Let me go,” she pleaded passionately, ‘‘I want 
to go to papa! I want papa!” 

At her cry Daniel made a single step forward, and 
then fell back because the situation seemed at the 
moment in the command of Richard. Again he felt 
the curious respect, the confidence, with which his 
uncle inspired him in critical moments. 

‘“‘T shall let you go when you have told me the 
truth,’”’ said Richard calmly. 

She grew instantly quiet, and for a minute she 


450° THE ANCIENT LAW 


appeared to hang a dead weight on his arm. Then 
her voice came with the whimpering, childlike sound. 

‘“‘I told them that I had never touched it—that I 
had asked papa for the money, and he had given 
it to me,” she said. 

‘I thought so,’ returned Richard grimly, and 
he released his hold so quickly that she fell in a limp 
heap at his feet. 

‘‘I wanted it from her own lips, though Mr. Cum- 
mins had already told me,” he added, as he looked 
at his nephew. 

For a moment Daniel stood there in silence, with 
his eyes on the gold-topped bottles on Lydia’s dress- 
ing table. He had heard Alice’s fall, but he did not 
stoop to lift her; he had heard Richard’s words, but 
he did not reply to them. In one instant a violent 
revulsion—a furious anger against Alice swept over 
him, and the next he felt suddenly, as in his 
dream, the little hands pass over his brow and lips. 

“She is right about it, Uncle Richard,” he said, 
“*I gave her the check.” 

At the words Richard turned quickly away, 
but with a shriek of joy, Alice raised herself to 
her knees, and looked up with shining eyes. 

“I told you papa would Know! I told you papa 
would help me!” she cried triumphantly to the old 
man. 

Without looking at her, Richard turned his glance 
again to his nephew’s face, and something that was 
almost a tremor seemed to pass through his voice. 

“ Daniel,’”’ he asked, ‘‘ what is the use?” 


THE ULTIMATE CHOICE 451 


“‘She has told you the truth,’’ repeated Daniel 
steadily, ‘‘I gave her the check.” 

**You are ready to swear to-this?’”’ 

“*If it is necessary, I am.”’ 

Alice had dragged herself slowly forward, still 
on her knees, but as she came nearer him, Daniel 
retreated instinctively step by step until he had put 
the table between them, 

‘‘It is better for me to go away, I suppose, at once?”’ 
he inquired of Richard. 

The gesture with which Richard responded was 
almost impatient. ‘“‘If you are determined—it will 
be necessary for a time at least,’’ he replied. ‘‘There’s. 
no doubt, I hope, that the case will be hushed up, 
but already there has been something of a scandal. 
I have made good the loss to the bank, but Geoffrey 
has been very difficult to bring toreason. He wanted 
a divorce and he wanted revenge in a vulgar way 
upon Alice.” 

‘*But she is safenow?’’ asked Daniel, and thecoldness 
in his tone came as a surprise to him when he spoke. 

“Yes, she is safe,’’ returned Richard, ‘‘and you, 
also, I trust. There is little danger, I think, under 
the circumstances, of a prosecution. If at any time,” 
he added, with a shaking voice, “‘before your return 
you should wish the control of your property, I will 
turn it over to you at once.”’ 

“Thank you,” said Daniel quietly, and then with 
an embarrassed movement, he held out hishand. ‘‘I 
shall go, I think, on the four o’clock train,”’ he con- 
tinued, ‘‘is that what you would advise?”’ 


452 THE ANCIENT LAW 


“Tt is better, I feel, to go immediately. I have 
an appointment with the lawyer for the bank at a 
quarter of five.’”” He put out his hand again for his 
nephew’s. ‘“‘Daniel, you are a good man,” he 
added, as he turned away. 

Not until a moment later, when he was in the hall, 
did Ordway remember that he had left Alice crouched 
on the floor, and coming back he lifted her into his 
arms. ‘‘It is all right, Alice, don’t cry,” he said, as 
he kissed her. Then turning from her, with a strange 
dullness of sensation, he crossed the hall and entered 
his room, where he found Lydia still lying with her 
face hidden in the cushions of the chair. 

At his step she looked up and put out her hand, 
with an imploring gesture. 

“Daniel!” she called softly, ‘‘ Daniel!” 

Before replying to her he went to his bureau and 
hurriedly packed some clothes into a bag. Then, 
with the satchel still in his hand, he came over and 
stopped beside her. 

“‘T can’t wait to explain, Lydia; Uncle Richard 
will tell you,’’ he said. 

“You are going away? Do you mean you are 
going away?” she questioned. 

“To-morrow you will understand,” he answered, 
“that it is better so.” © 

For a moment uncertainty clouded her face; then 
she raised herself and leaned toward him. 

‘“‘But Alice? Does Alice go with you?” she asked. 

‘*No, Alice is safe. Go to her.”’ 

“You will come back again? It is not forever?’’ 


THE ULTIMATE CHOICE 453 


He shook his head smiling. ‘‘ Perhaps,” he an- 
swered. 

She still gazed steadily up at him, and he saw 
presently a look come into her face like the look with 
which she had heard of the blow he had struck 
Geoffrey Heath. 

“Daniel, you are a brave man,” she said, and 
sobbed as she kissed him. 

Following him to the threshold, she listened, with 
her face pressed against the lintel, while she heard 
him go down the staircase and close the front door 
softly behind him. 


CHAPTER VII 
FLIGHT 


Nort until the train had started and the conductor 
had asked for his ticket, did Ordway realize that he 
was on his wap to Tappahannock. At the discovery 
he was conscious of no surprise—scarcely of any 
interest—it seemed to matter to him so little in 
which direction he went. A curious numbness of 
sensation had paralysed both his memory and his 
perceptions, and he hardly knew whether he was 
glad or sorry, warm or cold. In the same way he 
wondered why he felt no regret at leaving Botetourt 
forever—no clinging tenderness for his home, for 
Lydia, for Alice. If his children had been strangers 
to him he could not have thought of his parting from 
them with a greater absence of feeling. Was it pos- 
sible at last that he was to be delivered from the emo- 
tional intensity, the power of vicarious suffering, 
which had made him one of the worid’s failures ? 
He recalled indifferently Alice’s convulsed features, 
and the pathetic quiver of her lip, which had drooped 
like a child’s that is hurt. These things left him 
utterly unmoved when he remembered them, and he 
even found himself asking the next instant, with a 
vague curiosity, if the bald-headed man in the seat in 
front of him was going home to spend Christmas with 

454 


FLIGHT 455 


his daughter? ‘But what has this bald-headed 
man to do with Alice or with me ?’”’ he demanded 
in perplexity, ‘‘and why is it that I can think of 
him now with the same interest with which I think 
of my own child ? I am going away forever and I 
shall never see them again,’ he continued, with 
emphasis, as if to convince himself of some fact 
which he had but half understood. ‘‘Yes, I shall 
never see them again, and Alice wili be quite happy 
without me, and Alice’s child will grow up prob- 
ably without hearing my name. Yet I did it for 
Alice. No, I did not do it for Alice, or for Alice’s 
child,” he corrected quickly, with a piercing flash 
of insight. ‘‘It was for something larger, stronger 
—something as itievitable as the law. I could not 
help it, it was for myself,’’ he added, after a minute. 
And it seemed to him that with this inward revelation 
the outer covering of things was stripped suddenly 
from before hiseyes. As beneath his sacrifice herecog- 
nised the inexorable law, so beneath Alice’s beauty 
he beheld the skeleton which her radiant flesh clothed 
with life, and beneath Lydia’s mask of convention- 
ality her little naked soul, too delicate and shivering 
to stand alone. It was as if all pretence, all deceit, 
all illusions, had shrivelled now in the hard dry, 
atmosphere through which he looked. ‘Yes, I am 
indifferent to them all and to everything,’ he con- 
cluded ; ‘‘ Lydia, and Dick and even Alice are no closer 
to me than is the bald-headed man on the front seat. 
Nobody is closer to another when it comes to that, 
for each one of us is alone in an illimitable space.”’ 


456 THE ANCIENT LAW 


The swinging lights of the train were reflected in 
the falling snow outside, like orbed blue flames 
against a curtain of white. Through the crack under 
the window a little cold draught entered, blowing the 
cinders from the sill into his face. It was the com- 
mon day coach of a local train, and the passengers 
were, for the most part, young men or young women 
clerks, who were hastening back to their country 
homes for Christmas. Once when they reached a 
station several girls got off, with their arms filled 
with packages, and pushed their way through the 
heavy drifts to a sleigh waiting under the dim oil 
lamp outside. For a minute he followed them idly 
in his imagination, seeing the merry party ploughing 
over the old country roads to the warm farm house, 
where a bright log fire and a Christmas tree were 
prepared for them. The window panes were frosted 
over now, and when the train started on its slow 
journey he could see only the orbed blue flames 
dancing in the night against the whirling snowflakes. 

It was nine o’clock when they pulled into Tappa- 
hannock and when he came out upon the plat- 
form he found that the storm had ceased, though 
the ground lay white and hard beneath the scat- 
tered street lamps. Straight ahead of him, as he 
walked up the long hill from the station, he heard 
the ring of other footsteps on the frozen snow. The 
lights were still burning in the little shops, and through 
the uncurtained windows he could see the variegated 
display of Christmas decorations. Here and there 
a woman, with her head wrapped in a shawl, was 


FLIGHT 457 


peering eagerly at a collection of toys or a wreath 
of evergreens, but, for the rest, the shops appeared 
singularly empty even for so late an hour on Christ- 
mas Eve. In the absorption of his thoughts, he 
scarcely noticed this, and he was conscious of no 
particular surprise when, as he reached the familiar 
warehouse, he saw Baxter’s enormous figure loom 
darkly under the flickering light above the sidewalk. 
Behind him the vacant building yawned like a 
sepulchral cavern, the dim archway hung with a 
glistening fringe of icicles. 

“Ts that you, Baxter?’ he asked, and stretched 
out his hand with a mechanical movement. 

‘‘Why, bless my soul, Smith!”’ exclaimed Baxter, 
‘‘who ’d ever have believed it!” 

“T’ve just got off the train,” returned Ordway, 
feeling vaguely that some explanation of his presence 
was needed, ‘‘and I’m trying to find a place where 
I can keep warm until I take the one for the West at 
midnight. It did n’t occur to me that you would be 
in your office. I was going to Mrs. Buzzy’s.”’ 

“You ’d better come along with me, for I don’t 
believe you ‘ll find a living soul at Mag Buzzy’s— 
not even a kid,” replied Baxter, ‘“‘her husband is one 
of Jasper Trend’s overseers, you know, and they ’re 
most likely down at the cotton mills.” 

“At the cotton mills? Why, what’s the matter 
there?”’ 

‘““You have n’t heard then? I thought it was in all 
the papers. There’s been a big strike on for a week 
—Jasper lowered wages the first of the month—and 


? 


458 THE ANCIENT LAW 


every operative has turned out and demanded more 
pay and shorter hours. The old man’s hoppin’, of 
course, and the funny part is, Smith, that he lays 
every bit of the trouble at your door. He says 
_that you started it all by raisin’ the ideas of the 
operatives.”’ 

“But it’s a pretty serious cytiied for them, 
Baxter. How are they going to live through this 
weather?”’ 

“They ain’t livin’, they ’re starvin’, though I 
believe the union is comin’ to their help sooner or 
later. But what’s that in such a blood-curdlin’ 
spell as this?” 

A sudden noise, like that of a great shout, rising 
and falling in the bitter air, came to them from be- 
low the slope of the hill, and catching Ordway’s arm, 
Baxter drew him closer under the street lamp. 

“They ’re hootin’ at the guards Trend has put 
around the miils,’’ he said, while his words floated 
like vapour out of his mouth into the cold, “he’s got 
policemen stalkin’ up an’ down before his house, too.”’ 

‘*You mean he actually fears violence?”’ 

‘“‘Oh, well, when trouble is once started, you know, 
it is apt to go at a gallop. <A policeman got his 
skull knocked in yesterday, and one of the strikers 
had his leg broken this afternoon. Somebody has 
been stonin’ Jasper’s windows in the back, but they 
can’t tell whether it’s a striker or a scamp of a boy. 
The truth is, Smith,” he added, ‘“‘that Jasper ought 
to have sold the mills when he had an offer of a hun- 
dred thousand six months ago. But he would n’t 


FLIGHT 459 


do it because he said he made more than the interest 
on that five times over. I reckon he’s sorry enough 
now he did n’t catch at it.” 

For a moment Ordway looked in silence under 
the hanging icicles into the cavernous mouth of the 
warehouse, while he listened to the smothered 
sounds, like the angry growls of a great beast, 
which came toward them from the foot of the hill. 

Inte the confusion of his thoughts there broke sud- 
denly the meaning of Richard Ordway’s parting 
words. 

“Baxter,” he said quietly, “Ill give Jasper 
Trend a hundred thousand dollars for his mills to- 
night.” 

Baxter let go the lamp post against which he was 
leaning, and fell back a step, rubbing his stiffened 
hands on his big shaggy overcoat. 

“You,Smith? Why, whatin thunder do you want 
with ’em? It’s my belief that they will be afire 
before midnight. Do you hear that noise? Well, 
there ain’t men enough in Tappahannock to put 
those mills out when they are once caught.” 

Ordway turned his face from the warehouse to his 
companion, and it seemed to Baxter that his eyes 
shone like blue lights out of the darkness. 

‘*‘But they won’t burn after they ’re mine, Baxter,’ 
he answered. “Ill buy the mills and Ill settle 
this strike before I leave Tappahannock at mid- 
night.” 

“You mean you'll go away even after you've 
bought ’em?”’ 


460 THE ANCIENT LAW 


“I mean I ’ve got to go—to go always from place 
to place—but I'll leave you here in my stead.” 
He laughed shortly, but there was no merriment in 
the sound. ‘I Il run the mills on the codperative 
plan, Baxter, and I ll leave you in charge of them— 
you and Banks.”’ Then he caught Baxter’s arm with 
both hands, and turned his body forcibiy ‘n the 
direction of the church at the top of the hill. ‘‘ While 
we are talking those people down there are freezing,”’ 
he said. 

‘‘An’ so am I, if you don’t mind my mentionin’ 
it,’ observed Baxter meekly. 

‘‘Then let ’s go to Trend’s. There’s not a minute 
to lose, if we are to save the mills. Are you coming, . 
Baxter?” 

‘‘Oh, I’m comin’,’’ replied Baxter, waddling in 
his shaggy coat like a great black bear, “‘but I ’d like 
‘to git up my wind first,” he added, puffing clouds 
of steam as he ascended the hill. 

“There’s no time for that,’’ returned Ordway, 
sharply, as he dragged him along. 

When they reached Jasper Trend’s gate, a police- 
man, who strolled, beating his hands together, on 
the board walk, came up and stopped them as they 
were about to enter. Then recognising Baxter, 
he apologised and moved on. A moment later the 
sound of their footsteps on the porch brought the 
head of Banks to the crack of the door. 

‘Who are you? and what is your business?” he 
demanded. 

‘‘Banks!’’ said Ordway in a whisper, and at his 


FLIGHT 461 


voice the bar, which Banks had slipped from the 
door, felt with a loud crash from his hands. 

‘‘Good Lord, it’s really you, Smith!” he cried in 
a delirium of joy. 

‘Harry, be careful or you’ll wake the baby,’ 
called a voice softly from the top of the staircase. 

‘“‘Darn the baby!” growled Banks, lowering his tone 
obediently. ‘‘The next thing she ll be asking me 
to put out the mills because the light wakes the 
baby. When did you come, Smith? And what 
on God’s earth are you doing here?” 

““T came to stop the strike,’’ responded Ordway, 
smiling. “I’ve brought an offer to Mr. Trend, I 
must speak to him at once.” 

“‘He ’s in the dining-room, but if you ’ve come from 
the strikers it ’snouse. His back’s up.” 

‘Well, it ain’t from the strikers,’ interrupted 
Baxter, pushing his way in the direction of the dining- 


room. “It’s from a chap we won’t name, but 
he wants to buy the mills, not to settle the strike with 
Jasper.” 


‘'Then he’s a darn fool,’? remarked Jasper Trend 
from the threshold, ‘“‘for if I don’t get the ringleaders 
arrested befo’ mornin’ thar won’t be a brick left 
standin’ in the buildings.” 

“The chap I mean ain’t worryin’ about that,’’ 
said Baxter, ‘‘provided you ’ll sign the agreement in 
the next ten minutes. He’s ready to give you a 
hundred thousand for the mills, strikers an’ all.’’ 

‘Sign the agreement? I ain’t got any agreement,”’ 
protested Jasper, suspecting a trap, ‘‘and how do I 


462 THE ANCIENT LAW 


‘know that the strike ain’t over befo’ you ’re making 
the offer?” 

“Well, if you ’ll just step over to the window, and 
stick your head out, you won’t have much uncer- 
tainty about that, I reckon,”’ returned Baxter. 

Crossing to the window, Ordway threw it open, 
waiting with his hand on the sash, while the threat- 
ening shouts from below the hill floated into the 
room. 

‘““Papa, the baby can’t sleep for the noise those 
men make down at the mills,” called a peremptory 
voice from the landing above. 

‘“[Ttold you so!” groaned Banks, closing the 
window. 

“T ain’t got any agreement,” repeated Jasper, 
in helpless irritation, as he sank back into his chair. 

“Oh, I reckon Smith can draw up one for you as 
well as a lawyer,’ said Baxter, while Ordway, sitting 
down at a little fancy desk of Milly’s in one corner, 
wrote out the agreement of sale on a sheet of 
scented note paper. 

When he held the pen out to Jasper, the old man 
looked up at him with blinking eyes. ‘‘Is it to hold 
good if the damned thing burns befo’ mornin’?”’ 
he asked. | 

“Tf it burns before morning—yes.”’ 

With a sigh of relief Jasper wrote hisname. ‘How 
do I know if I’m to get the money?” he inquired 
the next instant, moved by a new suspicion. 

“I shall telegraph instructions to a lawyer in 
Botetourt,’”’ replied Ordway, as he handed the pen 


FLIGHT 463 


to Baxter, “and you will receive an answer by 
twelve o’clock to-morrow. I want your signature, 
also, Banks,’’ he continued, turning to the young 
man. ‘I ’ve made two copies, you see, one of which 
I shall leave with Baxter.” 

“Then you’re going away?’ inquired Banks, 
gloomily. 

Ordway nodded. “I am leaving on the midnight 
train,’ he answered. 

“So you ’re going West?’ 

“Yes, I’m going West, and I’ve barely time to 
settle things at the mills before I start. God bless 
you, Banks. Good-bye.” 

Without waiting for Baxter, who was struggling 
into his overcoat in the hall, he broke away from 
the detaining hold of Banks, and opening the door, 
ran down the frozen walk, and out into the street, 
where the policeman called a ‘Merry Christmas!” 
to him as he hurried by. 

When he gained the top of the hill, and descended 
rapidly toward the broad level beyond, where the 
brick buildings of the cotton mills stood in the centre 
of a waste of snow, the shouts grew louder and more 
frequent, and the black mass on the frozen ground 
divided itself presently into individual atoms. A 
few bonfires had started on the outskirts of the 
crowd, and by their fitful light, which fell in jagged, 
reddish shadows on the snow, he could see the hard 
faces of the men, the sharpened ones of the women, 
and the pinched ones of little children, all sallow 
from close work in unhealthy atmospheres and wan 


464 THE ANCIENT LAW 


from lack of nourishing and wholesome food. As 
he approached one of these fires, made from a burn- 
ing barrel, a young woman, with a thin, blue face, 
and a baby wrapped in a ragged shawl on her breast, 
turned and spat fiercely in his direction. ‘This 
ain’t no place for swells!’’ she screamed, and began 
laughing shrilly in a half-crazed voice. 

In the excitement no one noticed her, and her 
demented shrieks followed him while he made his 
way cautiously along the outskirts of the strikers, 
until he came to the main building, before which a few 
men with muskets had cleared a hollow space. They 
looked cowed and sullen, he saw, for their sympa- 
thies were evidently with the operatives, and he 
realised that the first organised attack would force 
them from their dangerous position. 

Approaching one of the guards, whom he remem- 
bered, Ordway touched him upon the arm and 
asked to be permitted to mount to the topmost step. 
‘‘T have a message to deliver to the men,”’ he said. 

The guard looked up with a start of fear, and then, 
recognising him, exclaimed in a hoarse whisper, ‘‘My 
God, boys, it’s ‘Ten Commandment Smith’ or it’s 
his ghost!?’ 

‘*‘Let me get through to the steps,” said Ordway, 
**T must speak to them.” | 

“Well, you may speak all you want to, but I doubt 
if they ’d listen to an angel from heaven if he were 
to talk to them about Jasper Trend. ‘They are pre- 
paring a rush on the doors now, and when they make 
it they ‘ll go through.” 


FLIGHT 405, 


Passing him in silence, Ordway mounted the 
steps, and stood with his back against the doors of 
the main building, in which, when he had last entered 
it, the great looms had been at work. Before him 
the dark mass heaved back and forth, and farther 
away, amid the bonfires in the waste of frozen snow, 
he could hear the shrill, mocking laughter of the 
half-crazed woman. 

“We won't hear any talk,’ cried a spokesman 
in the front ranks of the crowd. “It’s too late to. 
haggle now. Well have nothin’ from Jasper Trend 
unless he gives us what we ask.”’ 

‘‘ And if he says he ‘ll give it who will believe him?”’ 
jeered a woman, farther back, holding a crying child 
above her head. ‘“‘He killed the father and he’s 
starvin’ the children.” 

‘““No—no, we'll have no damned words. Well 
burn out the scabs!’’ shouted a man, lifting a torch 
he had just lit at a bonfire. As the torch rose in a 
splendid blaze, it lighted up the front of the building, 
and cast a yellow flame upon Ordway’s face. 

“IT have nothing to do with Jasper Trend!” he 
called out, straightening himself to his full height. 
*‘He has no part in the mills from to-night! I have 
bought them from him!”’ 

With the light on his face, he stood there an instant. 
before them, while the shouts changed in the first 
shock of recognition from anger to surprise. The 
minute afterward the crowd was rocked by a single: 
gigantic emotion, and it hurled itself forward, bear- 
ing down the guards in its efforts to reach the steps. 


466 THE ANCIENT LAW 


As it swayed back and forth its individual members 
—men, women and children—appeared to float 
like straws on some cosmic undercurrent of 
feeling. 

“From to-night the mills belong to me!”’ he cried 
in a voice which rang over the frozen ground to where 
the insane woman was laughing beside a bonfire. 
“Your grievances after to-night are not against 
Jasper Trend, but against me. You shall have 
‘ fair pay, fair hours and clean rooms, I promise 
you i ) 

He went on still, but his words were drowned 
in the oncoming rush of the crowd, which rolled 
forward like great waters, surrounding him, over- 
whelming him, sweeping him off his feet, and bearing 
him out again upon its bosom. The cries so lately 
growls of anger had changed suddenly, and above all 
the din and rush he heard rising always the name 
which he had made honoured and beloved in Tappa- 
hannock. It was the one great moment of his life, 
he knew, when on the tremendous swell of feeling, 
he was borne like a straw up the hillside and back 
into the main street of Tappahannock. 





An hour later, bruised, aching and half stunned, 
he entered the station and telegraphed twice to 
Richard Ordway before he went out upon the plat- 
form to take the train. He had left his instructions 
with Baxter, from whom he had just parted, and now, 
as he walked up and down in the icy darkness, 
broken by the shivering lights of the station, it seemed 


FLIGHT 467 


to him that he was like a man, who having been 
condemned to death, stands looking back a little 
wistfully at life from the edge of the grave. He had 
had his great moment, and ahead of him there was ~ 
nothing. 

A freight train passed with a grating noise, a sta- 
tion hand, holding a lantern ran hurriedly along the 
track, a whistle blew, and then again there was still- 
ness. His eyes were wearily following the track, 
when he felt a touch on his arm, and turning quickly, 
saw Banks, in a fur-lined overcoat, looking up at him 
with an embarrassed air. 

‘‘Smith,’’ he said, strangling a cough, ‘‘I ’ve seen 
Baxter, and neither he nor I like your going West 
this way all by yourself and half sick. If you don’t 
mind, I ’ve arranged to take a little holiday and come 
along. To tell the truth, it’s just exactly the chance 
I’ve been looking for. I have n’t been away from 
Milly twenty-four hours since I married her, and a 
change does anybody good.”’ 

‘“No, you can’t come, Banks, I don’t want you. 
1’d rather be alone,” replied Ordway, almost in- 
dignantly. 

“But you ain’t well,’’ insisted Banks stub- 
bornly. ‘‘We don’t like the looks of you, Baxter 
and I.’’ 

“Well, you can’t come, that’s all,” retorted Ord- 
way, as the red eyes of the engine pierced the dark- 
ness. ‘‘There, go home, Banks,” he added, as he 
held out his hand, ‘‘I’m much obliged to you. 
You’re a first-rate chap. Good-bye.”’ 


468 THE ANCIENT LAW 


“Then good-bye,” returned Banks hastily turning 
away. 

A minute afterward, as Ordway swung himself 
on the train, he heard the bells of a church, ringing 
cheerfully in the frosty air, and remembered, with 
a start, that it was Christmas morning 


CHAPTER VIII 
THE END OF THE RoapD 


IN THE morning, after a short sleep on the hard 
plush seat, he awoke with a shooting pain in his head. 
When the drowsiness of exhaustion had overcome 
him, he remembered, he had been idly counting the 
dazzling electric lights of a town through which they 
were passing. By the time he had reached “‘twenty- 
one” he had dropped off into unconsciousness, 
though it seemed to him that a second self within 
him, wholly awake, had gone on through the night 
counting without pause, “twenty-two, twenty-three, 
twenty-four, twenty-five—” Still in his brain the 
numbers went on, and still the great globular lights 
flashed past his eyes. 

Struggling awake in the gray dawn, he lay without 
changing his position, until the mist gave place 
slowly to the broad daylight. Then he found that 
they were approaching another town, which appeared 
from a distant view to resemble a single gigantic 
factory, composed chiefly of a wilderness of chim- 
neys. When he looked at his watch, he saw that 
it was eight o’clock; and the conductor passing 
through the coach at the instant, informed the 
passengers generally that they must change cars 
for the West. The name of the town Ordway failed 


469 


470 THE ANCIENT LAW 


to catch, but it made so little difference to him that 
he followed the crowd mechanically, without in- 
quiring where it would lead him. The pain in his 
head had extended now to his chest and shoulders, 
and presently it passed into his lower limbs, with a 
racking ache that seemed to take from him the con- 
trol of hismuscles. Yet all the while he felt a curious 
drowsiness, which did not in the least resemble sleep, 
creeping over him like the stealthy effect of some 
powerful drug. After he had breathed the fresh air 
outside, he felt it to be impossible that he should 
return to the overheated car, and pushing his way 
through the crowded station, where men were rushing 
to the luncheon counter in one corner, he started along 
a broad street, which looked as if it led to an open 
square at the top of a long incline. On either side 
there were rows of narrow tenements, occupied 
evidently by the operatives in the imposing factories 
he had observed from the train. Here and there a 
holly wreath suspended from a cheap lace curtain, 
reminded him again that it was Christmas morning, 
and by some eccentricity of memory, he recalled 
vividly a Christmas before his mother’s death, 
when he had crept on his bare feet, in the dawn, 
to peep into the bulging stocking before her fireplace. 

At the next corner a small eating house had hung 
out its list of Christmas dainties, and going inside 
he sat down at one of the small deserted tables and 
asked for a cup of coffee. When it was brought 
he swallowed it in the hope that it might drive away 
the heaviness in his head, but after a moment of 


THE END OF THE ROAD 471 


relief the stupor attacked him again more oppres- 
sively than ever. He felt that even the growing 
agony in his forehead and shoulders could not keep 
him awake if he could only find a spot in which to lie 
down and rest. 

After he came out into the street again he felt 
stronger and better, and it occurred to him that his 
headache was due probably to the fact that he had 
eaten nothing since breakfast the day before. He 
remembered now that he had missed his luncheon 
because of his long walk into the country, and the 
recollection of this trivial incident seemed to make 
plain all the. subsequent events. Everything that 
had been so confused a moment ago stood out quite 
clearly now. His emotions, which had been benumbed 
when he left Botetourt, revived immediately in the 
awakening of his memory; and he was seized with a 
terrible longing to hold Alice in his arms and to say 
to her that he forgave her and loved her still. It 
seemed to him impossible that he should have come 
away after a single indifferent kiss, without glancing 
back—and her face rose before him, not convulsed 
and haggard as he had last seen it, but glowing and 
transfigured, with her sparkling blue eyes and her 
lips that were too red and too full for beauty. Then, 
even while he looked at her with love, the old numb- 
ness crept back, and his feeling for her died utterly 
away. ‘‘No, I have ceased to care,” he thought 
indifferently. ‘“‘It does not matter to me whether 
I see her again or not. I must eat and lie down, 
nothing else is of consequence.” 


472 THE ANCIENT LAW 


He had reached the open space at the end of the 
long graded hill, and as he stopped to look about him 
he saw that a small hotel, frequented probably by 
travelling salesmen, stood directly across the square, 
which was now deep insnow. Following the pavement 
to the open door of the lobby, he went inside and asked 
for a room, after which he passed into the restaurant 
and drank a second cup of coffee. Then turning 
away from his untasted food, he went upstairs to 
the large, bare apartment, with a broken window pane, 
which they had assigned him, and throwing himself 
upon the unmade bed, fell heavily asleep. 

When he awoke the pain was easier, and feeling 
oppressed by the chill vacancy of the room, he went 
downstairs and out into the open square. Though 
it was a dull gray afternoon, the square was filled 
with children, dragging bright new sleds over the snow. 
One of them, a little brown-haired girl, was trundling 
her Christmas doll and as she passed him, she turned 
and smiled into his face with a joyful look. Some- 
thing in her smile was vaguely familiar to him, and 
he remembered, after a minute, that Emily had 
looked at him like that on the morning when he had 


. met her for the first time riding her old white horse 


up the hill in Tappahannock. ‘Yes, it was that 
look that made me love her,” he thought dispas- 
sionately, as if he were reviewing some dimly remem- 
bered event in a former life, ‘‘and it is because I 
loved her that I was able to do these things. If I 
had not loved her, I should not have saved Milly 
Trend, nor gone back to Botetourt, nor sacrificed 


THE END OF THE ROAD 473 


myself for Alice. Yes, all these have come from 
that,’ he added, ‘‘and will go back, I suppose, 
to that in the end.” The little girlran by again, still 
trundling her doll, and again he saw Emily in her 
red cape on the old horse. 

For several hours he sat there in the frozen square, 
hardly feeling the cold wind that blew over him. But 
when he rose presently to go into the hotel, he found 
that his limbs were stiff, and the burning pain had 
returned with violence to his head and chest. The 
snow in the square seemed to roll toward him as he 
walked, and it was with difficulty that he dragged 
himself step by step along the pavement to the 
entrance of the hotel. After he was in his room 
again he threw himself, still dressed, upon the bed, 
and fell back into the stupor out of which he had 
come. : 

When he opened his eyes after an hour, he was 
hardly sure, for the first few minutes, whether he 
was awake or asleep. The large, bare room in which 
he had lost consciousness had given place, when he 
awoke, to his prison cell. The hard daylight came 
to him through the grated windows, and from a nail 
in the wall he saw his gray prison coat, with the 
red bars, won for good behaviour, upon the sleeve. 
Then while he looked at it, the red bars changed 
quickly to the double stripes of a second term, and 
the double stripes became three, and the three 
became four, until it seemed to him that he was striped 
from head to foot so closely that he knew that he must 
have gone on serving term after term since the be- 


474 THE ANCIENT LAW 


ginning of the world. ‘‘No, no, that is not mine. I 
am wearing the red bars!’’ he cried out, and came 
back to himself with a convulsive shudder. 

As he looked about him the hallucination van- 
ished, and he felt that he had come out of an eternity 
of unconsciousness into which he should presently 
sink back again. The day before appeared to belong 
to some other life that he had lived while he was still 
young, yet when he opened his eyes the same gray 
light filled the windows, the same draught blew: 
through the broken pane, the same vague shadows 
crawled back and forth on the ceiling. The head- 
ache was gone now, but the room had grown very 
cold, and from time to time, when he coughed, long 
shivers ran through his limbs and his teeth chattered. 
He had thrown his overcoat across his chest as a 
coverlet, but the cold from which he suffered was 
an inward chill, which was scarcely increased by the 
wind that blew through the broken pane. There 
was no confusion in his mind now, but a wonderful 
lucidity, in which he saw clearly all that had 
happened to him last night in Tappahannock. “Yes, 
that was my good moment,” he said ‘‘and after such 
a moment there is nothing, but death. If I can 
only die everything will be made entirely right and 
simple.”” As he uttered the words the weakness of 
self pity swept over him, and with a sudden sense 
of spiritual detachment, he was aware of a feeling 
of sympathy for that other ‘‘I,’’ who seemed so 
closely related to him, and yet outside of him- 
self. The real ‘‘I’’ was somewhere above amid the 


THE END OF THE ROAD 475 


crawling shadows on the ceiling, but the other— 
the false one—lay on the bed under the overcoat; and 
he saw, when he looked down that, though he himself 
was young, the other “I’’ was old and haggard and 
unshaven. ‘‘So there are two of us, after all,’’ he 
thought, “‘ poor fellows, poor fellows.”’ 

But the minute afterward the perception of his 
dual nature faded as rapidly as the hallucination 
of his prison cell. In its place there appeared the 
little girl, who had passed him, trundling her Christ- 
mas doll, in the square below. ‘“‘I have seen her 
before—she is vaguely familiar,” he thought, troubled 
because he could not recall the resemblance. From 
this he passed to the memory of Alice when she was 
still a child, and she came back to him, fresh and 
vivid, as on the day when she had run out to beg 
him to come in to listen to her music. The broken 
scales ran in his head again, but there was no love 
in his heart. 

His gaze dropped from the ceiling and turned to- 
ward the door, for in the midst of his visions, he had 
seen it open softly and Banks come into the room on 
tiptoe and stop at the foot of the bed, regarding him 
with his embarrassed and silly look ‘‘What in the 
devil, am I dreaming about Banks for?’’ he demanded 
aloud, with an impatient movement. of his feet, as 
if he meant to kick the obiruding dream away from 
his bed. 

At the kick the dream stopped rolling its promi- 
nent pale eyes and spoke. ‘‘I hope you ain’t sick, 
Smith,’’ it said, and with the first words he knew 


476 THE ANCIENT LAW 


that it was Banks in the familiar flesh and not the 
disembodied spirit. 

“‘No I’m not sick, but what are you doing here?”’ 
he asked. 

‘Enjoying myself ”’ replied Banks gloomily. 

“Well, I wish you’d chosen to enjoy yourself 
somewhere else.” 

“T could n’t. If you don’t mind I ’d like to stuff 
the curtain into that window pane.” 

‘“‘Oh, I don’t mind. When did you get here?” 

“I came on the train with you.” 

“On the train with me? Where did you get on? 
I did n’t see you.” 

“You didn’t look,’ replied Banks, from the 
window, where he was stuffing the red velveteen 
curtain into the broken pane. ‘“‘I was in the last 
~ seat in the rear coach.”’ 

“So you followed me,’’ said Ordway indignantly. 
“‘T told you not to. Why did you doit?” 

Banks came back and stood again at the foot of 
the bed, looking at him with his sincere and kindly 
smile. 

‘‘Well, the truth is, I wanted an outing,’’ he an- 
swered, ‘‘it’s a good baby as babies go, but I get 
dog-tired of playing nurse.”’ 

‘“You might have gone somewhere else. There 
are plenty of places.”’ 

““T could n’t think of ’em, and, besides, this seems 
a nice town. The’re a spanking fine lot of fac- 
tories. But I hope you ain’t sick Smith? What 
are you doing in bed?’’ 


’ 


THE END OF THE ROAD 477 


“Oh, I’ve given up,” replied Ordway gruffly. 
‘‘Every man has a right to give up some time, has n’t 
he?” 

“T don’t know about every man,’ returned Banks, 
stolidly, ‘‘but you have n’t, Smith.” . 

“Well, I’ve done it anyway,” retorted Ordway, 
and turned his face to the wall. 

As he lay there with closed eyes, he had an obscure 
impression that Banks—Banks, the simple; Banks, 
the impossible—was in some way operating the forces 
of destiny. First he heard the bell ring, then the 
door open and close, and a little later, the bleak 
room was suffused with a warm rosy light in which 
the vague shadows melted into a shimmering back- 
ground. The crackling of the fire annoyed him be- 
cause it suggested the possibility of physical com- 
fort, and he no longer wanted to be comfortable. 

*‘Smith,’’ said Banks, coming over to the bed and 
pulling off the overcoat, “‘I’’ve got a good fire here 
and a chair. I wish you’d get up. Good Lord, . 
your hands are as hot as a hornet’s nest. When 
did you eat anything?” 

“T had breakfast in Botetourt,’ replied Ordway, 
as he rose from the bed and came over to the chair 
Banks had prepared. ‘‘I can’t remember when it 
was, but it must have been since the creation of the 
world, I suppose.”’ The fire grew suddenly black 
before him, “‘I’d rather lie down,” he added, ‘my 
head is splitting and I can’t see.”’ 

“Oh, you Il see all right in a minute. Wait till I 
light this candle, so the electric light won’t hurt 


478 THE ANCIENT LAW 


your eyes. The boy ’s gone for a little supper, and 
as soon as you ’ve swallowed a mouthful you ’ll begin 
to feel better.”’ 

“But I’m not hungry. I won’t eat,’ returned 
Ordway, with an irritable feeling that Banks was 
looming into a responsibility. Anything that pulled 
one back to life was what he wanted to escape, and 
even the affection of Banks might prove, he thought, 
tenaciously clinging. One resolution he had made 
in the beginning—he would not take up his life again 
for the sake of Banks. 

“Yes, you must, Smith,’’ remonstrated the other, 
with an angelic patience which gave him, if possible, 
a more foolish aspect. “It’s after six o’clock and 
you haven’t had a bite since yesterday at eight. 
That ’s why your head’s so light and you’re in a 
raging fever.”’ 

“It isn’t that, Banks, it’s because I’ve got to 
die,’”? he answered. “If they don’t hush things up 
with money, I may have to go back to prison.” 
As he said the words he saw again the prison coat, 
with the double stripes of a second term, as in the 
instant of his hallucination. 

‘I know,”’ said Banks, softly, as he bent over to 
poke the fire. ‘‘There was a line or two about it ina 
New York paper. But they ’ll hush it up, and be- 
sides they said it was just suspicion.” 

“You knew all the time and yet you wanted me 
to go back to Tappahannock?”’ 

“Oh, they don’t read the papers much there, except 
the Tappahannock Herald, and it won’t get into 


THE END OF THE ROAD 479 


that. It was just a silly little slip anyway, and 
not two dozen people will be likely to know what 
it meant.” 

‘“And you, Banks? What do you think?”’ he asked 
with a mild curiosity. 

Banks shook his head. “Why, what’s the use 

in your asking?”’ he replied. ‘“‘Of course, I know 
that you did n’t doit, andif you had done it, it would 
have been just because the other man ought to have 
written his name and wouldn't,” he concluded, 
unblushingly. 

For a moment Ordway looked at him in silence. 
“You ’re a good chap, Banks,” he said at last in a 
dull voice. Again he felt, with an awakened irrita- 
tion, that the absurd Banks was pulling him back 
to life. Was it impossible, after all, that a man 
should give up, as long as there remained a soul alive 
who believed in him? It wasn’t only the love of 
women, then, that renewed courage. He had loved ° 
both Emily and Alice, and yet they were of less im- 
portance in his life at this hour than was Banks, 
whom he had merely endured. Yet he had thought 
the love of Emily a great thing and that of Banks 
a small one. 

His gaze went back to the flames, and he did not 
remove it when a knock came at the door, and supper 
was brought in and placed on a little table before the 
fire. 

‘“‘T ordered a bowl of soup for you, Smith,” said 
Banks, crumbling the bread into it as he spoke, as 
if he were preparing a meal for a baby, “and a good 


480 THE ANCIENT LAW 


stout piece of beefsteak for myself. Now drink this 
whiskey, won’t you.”’ 

“I’m not hungry,” returned Ordway, pushing 
the glass away, after it had touched his lips. “I 
won't eat.” 

Banks placed the bowl of soup on the fender, and 
then sat down with his eyes fastened on the tray. 
“T have n’t had a bite myself since breakfast,’’ he 
remarked, ‘‘and I’m pretty faintish, but I tell you, 
Smith, if it ’s the last word I speak, that I won’t put 
my knife into that beefsteak until you ’ve eaten 
your soup—no, not if I die right here of starvation.” 

‘Well, I’m sorry you ’re such a fool, for I’ve no 
intention of eating it. I ieft you my whiskey, you 
can take that.” 

“I should n’t dare to on an empty stomach. I get 
drunk too quick.” 

For a few minutes he sat in silence regarding the 
supper with a hungry look; then selecting a thin slice 
of bread, he stuck it on the end of a fork, and kneeling 
upon the hearthrug, held it out to the glowing coals. 
As it turned gradually to a delicious crisp brown, the 
appetising smell of it floated to Ordway’s nostrils. 

“I always had a particular taste for toast,” re- 
marked Banks as he buttered the slice and laid it on 
a hot plate on the fender. When he took up a second 
one, Ordway watched him with an attention of 
which he was almost unconscious, and he did not 
remove his gaze from the fire, until the last slice, brown 
and freshly buttered, was laid carefully upon the 
others. As he finished Banks threw down his fork, and 


THE END OF THE ROAD 48x 


rising to his feet, looked wistfully at the beef- 
steak, keeping hot before the cheerful flames. 

“Tt ’s kind of rare, just as I like it,” he observed, 
‘thick and juicy, with little brown streaks from the 
broiler, and a few mushrooms scattered gracefully 
on top. Tappahannock is a mighty poor place for 
a steak,” he concluded resignedly, “‘ it ain’t often I 
have a chance at one, but J thought to-night being 
Christmas e 

“Then, for God’s sake, eat it!’ thundered Ordway, 
while he made a dash for his soup. 

But an hour after he had taken it, his fever rose 
so high that Banks helped him into bed and rushed 
out in alarm for the doctor. 





CHAPTER IX 
Tue Licut BEYOND 


Out of the obscurity of the next few weeks, he 
brought, with the memory of Banks hovering about 
his bed, the vague impression of a woman’s step across 
his floor and a woman’s touch on his brow and hands. 
When he returned to consciousness the woman’s 
step and touch had vanished, but Banks was still 
nursing him with his infinite patience and his silly, 
good-humoured smile. The rest was a dream, he said 
to himself, resignedly, as he turned his face to the 
wall and slept. 

On a mild January morning, when he came down- 
stairs for the first time, and went with Banks out into 
the open square in front of the hotel, he put almost 
timidly the question which had been throbbing in 
his brain for weeks. 

“Was there anybody else with me, Banks? I 
thought—I dreamed—lI could n’t get rid ofit uk 

‘“Who else could there have been?”’ asked Banks, 
and he stared straight before him, at the slender 
spire of the big, gray church in the next block. So 
the mystery would remain unsolved, Ordway under- 
stood, and he would go back to life cherishing either 
a divine memory or a phantasy of delirium. 

After a little while Banks went off to the chemists’ 

482 





THE LIGHT BEYOND 483 


with a prescription, and Ordway sat alone on a bench 
in the warm sunshine, which was rapidly melting the 
snow. It was Sunday morning, and presently the 
congregation streamed slowly past him on its way 
to the big gray church just beyond. A bright blue 
sky was overhead, the sound of bells was in the 
air, and under the melting snow he saw that 
the grass was still fresh and green. As he sat there 
in the wonderful Sabbath stillness, he felt, with a 
new sense of security, of reconciliation, that his life 
had again been taken out of his hands and adjusted 
without his knowledge. This time it had been 
Banks—Banks, the impossible—who had swayed 
his destiny, and lacking all other attributes, Banks 
had accomplished it through the simple power of the ° 
human touch. In the hour of his need it had been 
neither religion nor philosophy, but the outstretched 
hand, that had helped. Then his vision broadened 
and he saw that though the body of love is one, the : 
members of it are infinite; and it was made plain to 
him at last, that the love of Emily, the love of Alice, 
and the love of Banks, were but different revelations of 
the same immortality. He had gone down into the 
deep places, and out of them he had brought this 
light, this message. As the people streamed past 
him to the big gray church, he felt that if they 
would only stop and listen, he could tell them in the 
open, not in walls, of the thing that they were seeking. 
Yet the time had not come, though in the hope of it 
he could sit there patiently under the blue sky, with 
the snow melting over the grass at his feet. 


484 THE ANCIENT LAW 


At the end of an hour Banks returned, and stood 
over him with affectionate anxiety. “In a few 
days you ’ll be well enough to travel, Smith, and I ’ll 
take you back with me to Tappahannock.”’ 

Ordway glanced up, smiling, and Banks saw in his 
face, so thin that the flesh seemed almost transparent, 
the rapt and luminous look with which he had stood 
over his Bible in the green field or in the little grove 
of pines. 

“You will go back to Tappahannock and Baxter 
will take you in until you grow strong and well, and 
then you can start your schools, or your library, and 
look after the mills instead of letting Baxter do it.’ 

‘“‘Yes,”’ said Ordway, “yes,” but he had hardly 
heard Banks’s words, for his gaze was on the blue 
sky, against which the spire of the church rose like 
a pointing finger. His face shone as if from an in- 
ward flame, and this flame, burning clearly in his 
blue eyes, transfigured his look. Ah, Smith was 
always a dreamer, thought Banks, with the uncom- 
prehending simplicity of a child. 

But Ordway was looking beyond Banks, beyond 
the church spire, beyond the blue sky. He saw 
himself, not as Banks pictured him, living quietly in 
Tappahannock, but still struggling, still fighting, still 
. falling to rise and go on again. His message was 
not for Tappahannock alone, but for all places where 
_ there were men and women working and suffering 
and going into prison and coming out. He heard ~ 
his voice speaking to them in the square of this town; 
then in many squares and in many towns—— 


THE LIGHT BEYOND 485 


“Come,” said Banks softly, “the wind is changing. 
It is time to go in.” 

With an effort Ordway withdrew his gaze from 
the church spire. Then leaning upon Banks’s arm, he 
slowly crossed the square to the door of the hotel. 
But before going inside, he turned and stood for a 
moment looking back at the grass which showed 
fresh and green under the melting snow. 


























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THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 





































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































